Thinking Out Loud
PHEW!

April 26, 2014
By: Diane Szczepanski

This life is messy.
Kenneth Robert Livingstone

When I purchased my house several years back, it was listed as a two bedroom and perhaps it was.. then.

When I'm asked now, I reply it is a one bedroom home, with one mysterious room emitting funky odors from under its door and I dare not enter to investigate any further.

Oh, it was a cute room at one time.

Spaceship flocked wallpaper, Red Wings' posters, trains and all the other things any little boy might love.

However, the last time I ventured in there, I tripped and fell onto six weeks worth of dirty laundry, thanks to a Detroit Tigers bobble-head that had fallen onto the floor from its precarious dusty shelf and I came face to face with an old pair of tennis shoes.

A pair that had probably fit in middle school and had grown musty, stinky and filled with dust balls.

That's when I gave up the "Clean Your Bedroom" fight. It just became easier to close the door in the "out of sight, out of mind" theory of dealing with unpleasantness.

This month as my son turns 18, I hope to teach him more about keeping a household running and the daily responsibilities it requires.

At the very least, I need to impress on him that penicillin is readily available at all the local pharmacies and need not be grown in his room.

Until such time there's a turn around in the manner in which he keeps his room, I will continue to keep the door shut, pretend everything is okay in there and say my daily prayers that his future wife has a kind and patient nature.

Lord knows, she's going to need it.