I have been watching my sons of late, intently. I have tried on many occasions to understand, just to understand their sense of thought, their perception of life and how “Things run.” And you know what, it is hard because I just don’t understand.
What is it I don’t understand you may well ask? – and it’s this. Their comprehension of tidiness is no-where near my own and this I find really distressing. It’s as if we are living in two parallel worlds, theirs being somewhere on Mars and mine someplace else. I have tried to step into their rooms without having to think I am on some mission with the SAS in the deepest darkest parts of the jungle. I have to go into survival mode when I enter their bedrooms, the clutter alone confuses the sense out of me.
So before I enter their room thoughts of dislodging a toe or tripping over something, which could send me sprawling forth, spread-eagled whilst hitting my head against something hard, like a crusty and very old and stale piece of bread, often swim before my thoughts. Other times, the thoughts floating through my head are more sinister. Perhaps I might find a bag of fleas or maggots nestling in the folds of the big leather bean bag.
Ok, so things are not that bad, yet, but believe me the signs are there.
My eldest son, God bless him, is working hard towards his GCSE’s, in the midst and amongst a whole heap of rubbish. Papers are strewn everywhere, packets of this and that litter the floor and not the bin, clothes are haphazardly thrown over anything with a handle or a ledge. I have asked him so many times to try to keep his room tidy, yet his mind seems to be suspended somewhere in cyberspace, “huh? Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it tomorrow.” In a lame way I have to shout back “tomorrow never comes.” My despair evident as I trudge wearily out of his room really wanting to grab a box of matches and set the place alight.
My younger son, he tries, he really does. In his own mythical mind, his room is tidy. In fact, he is forever tidying his room, he does this several times a day and I still for the life of me, cannot understand his logic. Midnight on Saturday I could hear, banging and clashing – I stormed into his room to holler him back into beddy byes and to state the neighbours downstairs would be none too pleased by his midnight antics. Yet there he was, in the throes of tidying his room, with an intensity, sincerity and fervency of a man who was on his last night before the nooseman took his head. He stated he could not sleep, looking at me sheepishly. That indeed calmed my angered and demented state instantly. I too was tired and as I had raced to his room, I had thoughts of pounding his little brains into the black plastic bag he was shovelling bits and pieces of paper into. But he sounded so forlorn and honest in his quest to tidy up at midnight, why not midday? Why not early morning, but at midnight? – but I let things go and raced back to the warmth and comfort of my bed.
The next morning, I peeped around his bedroom door, eyes red and face looking like a blow fish on steroids – I was tired, peeps. There I was thinking to myself as I opened the door slowly how surprised I thought I would be that my “babeee” had actually tided his room at some mad hour of the night, as if Dupey had kept him up. So there I was, anticipation riding high when…”but wait, a wuh dis?” His room was in a worst state than when he had started? He then rolled over whispering “Kiss, kiss, mummy, love you” and then fell back into the land of nod. Had he not greeted me with such tenderness of voice, I certainly would’ve roused his carcass from his bed with a pail of cold water and ordered him pronto, to finish what he had proceeded to do, because had kept me up last night and I certainly was not a happy mummeeeeeee.
I then wandered into my eldest son’s room and aghast I had to close the door in case anything hibernating in there decided to leg it out, trailing it’s vermin all over my house.
I had to sit down after and ponder, maybe it was me as both my sons’ notions of tidiness were the same. Maybe it was me…I continued to ponder as I ventured back into my own room to catch a few more zzzzz’s, whilst also stumbling over a myriad of clothing and papers which too littered my floor. I stubbed my big toe on something, ah the ole gym bag from yesterday and as I fell forward, I hit my head on the handbag I had taken to a meeting two days prior.
I guess peeps, that the apple certainly does not fall far from de tree
