I came downstairs this morning to find the kitchen door not unlocked, but open.
This has happened before.
The Kerrteens and their mom seem to be unable to make sure a door is latched. They seem to be unable to say to themselves repeatedly “I go out the door, I must make sure the door is latched. I turn off the car, I must make sure the lights are off.” Things like that.
Kerrmom is kind of cute and hot even still, so she gets away stuff like this. But those teens are not cute kids anymore. Do I HAFTA keep them?
Fortunately all the Kerranimals are accounted for. Unfortunately, my dwindling oil supply is probably now a puddle in the bottom of the tank. Please hurry, oil man!
So share with me your stories of “Kid, my parents woulda smacked me into next week if I …”
TheKid learned fast to close and lock the door when she gets home when one day she left the door open and went to take a shower. She opened the bathroom door to find my mother standing in the hallway. Scared the holy hell out of her. My mom started with the 'what if I was a rapist? Or burglar?" TheKid now locks the door to keep Gramma out.
My annoyance is her requesting something from he grocery store - and then not eating it. On the counter right now is a box of Chicken in a Biskit that she ate maybe a half dozen of, then was over them. A bag of cheese popcorn that she opened, ate a handful of, and was over. It’s difficult for me to say no at the store - I have to get better at that.
Ooooooh. Wasting food drives me up a tree. I’m 39, and I was a late child of my Depression-era parents (my dad is now 84). It was drilled into me that you simply do not waste food. It’s a sin, ungrateful, irresponsible, whatever you want to call it. Makes me crazy to have to throw something out. Thank God we have a compost pile set up so I can at least salve my wounded conscience by saying, “Well, we didn’t COMPLETELY waste it.”
For years I couldn’t seem to make my daughter understand that if you just lock the doorknob and slam the door, it doesn’t always latch, it sometimes just bounces off the doorjamb and stays open (and never mind that she should also be locking the deadbolt, which of course you have to do from the OUTSIDE if you’re leaving the house).
Until our much-loved cat got out, and was missing for a week. She understands now.
And so much ditto on the uneaten food. It makes me crazy. Especially when she neglects the food that she asked for that I’m uninterested in, and eats the stuff I like. Grr.
You do not walk into a room, turn on all the lights, turn on the TV, decide you want to be somewhere else and simply walk away. Are we trying to light the damn neighborhood? Also, and this one makes me twitchy, you do not wake me at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday to let me know you think you found a souvenir store necklace that you lost last summer or show me a dance move you made up!! Grrrr…
I don’t have teens, but the guys who live in the flat upstairs are really young, I think they’ve just left home, and they have no idea how to operate complicated technology, like bins. Or the (shared) front door.
In the year since they moved in, the kids in that flat have not ONCE put out the shared house bins, they dump their stuff in the middle of the lawn, presumably as a gift to the fairies, and leave junk mail and flyers strewn over the corridors. As for sorting recycling… well… best just not to think about it. They seem nice enough when I actually speak to them, but really, they haven’t got over the idea that mummy isn’t going to tidy up after them any more.
They also regularly forget to lock the front door, which is the only decently strong door in the house, and swings wiiiide open onto the street in our lovely interesting neighbourhood. I’ve even had one of them ask me ‘Oh, were you having a party last night? Some guys were knocking saying they wanted to get in to the party, but we weren’t having one, so I just let them in and went out, so was it you they wanted?’ You need a key to lock the door when you go out… and we do have a locked door for a reason, yes? To keep random people out, yes?
On the other hand, I suppose the bikes they leave blocking the corridor are the first thing that’ll be nicked. Problems might cancel each other out.
Why why why why why do they beg you for ham for six months every time you go to the store, and when you finally find a great deal on ham and buy double what you normally do, they wrinkle their little noses and go, “Ew…why did you buy ham? I hate ham. I’ve never liked ham!”
Really, it’s the last part that really fries my egg. I understand tastes change and maybe you’re sick of ham. But NEVER liked ham? BULLSHIT!!! I’ve got six months worth of grocery receipts and a refrigerator drawer sticky with ham goo from all the goddamn ham you’ve been inhaling!!! Don’t act like I’m some sort of mental defective with an odd pork compulsion all of the sudden!
For kids that regularly leave the front door open…if they also have pets, make a deal with the neighbours/friends that they would hide the pet for a couple of days while the animal went “missing”, thereby having the kids feel guilty and hopefully learning to close the door afterwards. The neighbour could magically “find” the cat or dog a couple of days later and all would be well, but hopefully the lesson would be learned.
My ex-wife would do that. She’d wake up in the morning and turn on the bathroom light on her way to the kitchen*, the get mad at me when I’d walk over and turn it off because she was “going to take a shower in a few minutes” “That’s great, turn it on it a few minutes then” or as I often found myself saying “For every minute a light is on, I have to give someone money.”
*I mean that literally. She’d be walking down (a perfectly lit) hallway and reach her arm into the bathroom to flip the switch and keep on going. There was no good reason to flip the bathroom light on 10 minutes early. I could at least understand if the hallway was dark and she didn’t want to trip over something, but that wasn’t the case.
Yeah, that would be cruel. I could see doing that, but I wouldn’t do it for more then a few hours. Probably not overnight.
It would depend on the age of the kids, type of pet, how long for the lesson to be learned, type of living situation (apt vs house) etc…
I mean, I could see 5 and 7 year old with a hamster in an apartment ‘losing’ it overnight. But if it’s a 10 year old with a golden retriever in a single family house near a busy road I’d think anything past the hour mark would be cruel.
I find that ADHD moments are quite common in a lot of people. The only thing that ever worked for me was when people stopped making a big deal about it. Just a short, calmly worded reminder worked a lot better than griping at me about it. “BigT, the door,” works a lot better than “Why in the world can’t you ever shut the door when you open the fridge? I have to come in here, see the door open and shut it. Do you want to let all the food spoil?”
I think I just wound up subconsciously leaving the door open because of spite.
Parking the car in the garage, coming in the house, and forgetting to close the garage door. It’s rare that I don’t go out there to get something and I’ll push the close button. but one night there was a blizzard, below zero and and the next morning the garage was full of snow, some plants we were wintering over were frozen, as was a case of Coke. And our snowblower sitting there in full view. Words were exchanged. And now we are all OCD about it, checking to see the door is closed multiple times.
