School days are done!
Summer has arrived!
Time for my annual speech about chores, and how “just because it’s summer doesn’t mean you are all just going to be laying around here the whole time.”
Time for my annual declaration that I’m going to make a chore chart (Which I never do)
and motivational talk to my own pleading eyes in the mirror,
all, “C’mon, Kerri! You can stick to it this time.”
Every year in early June, without fail, I attempt to paint a picture of how beautiful a well-oiled machine of a home would be to live in, and all three girls still living at home then collapse on a bed or couch dramatically, or drape themselves across something backwards with their perma-rolled eyes, and act moments from their own untimely deaths.
At this point, one of them will ask me why it’s supposedly
“always THEM that has to do EVERYTHING around here,”
or one will demand to know the full list of chores I gave to a sister, so they can mentally compare work-loads to assure their personal one seems the most light.
In their minds they are deserving of summers spent abroad on yachts, taxiing between Greek islands, not just at home taking out occasional bags of trash!
What kind of punishment is this requirement of having to throw away one’s own wrapper?!
What is this? San Quentin?!
Run the vacuum, too?!
UGH! They deserve much more than that!
Friends, maybe this is the “Uphill both ways in the snow” of my story,
but kids these days have not SEEN the kind of chores I had to do as a kid.
Every Saturday when I was growing up, a list would be taped to the 900 pound, wood-framed TV in our living room, which we would approach like it was a Poltergeist,
and my brother and I would not be released to play until we had fully completed it.
This list would involve the use of T-squares, and included measurements, and was always so egregious I would have rather literally gone to prom with my girls’ dreaded bags of trash.
My brother and I were out digging trenches in high heat, with our only snack option being a bag of questionably sandy trail mix.
If thirsty, we were told to get water from the canteen that had been in the back of my dad’s truck since before both of our conceptions,
that I am quite positive he had filled in some forest stream ripe with Giardia, it tasted so bad.
There would always be some feeding or wrangling to be done of some outlandish pet he had brought home on a whim.
The blind rooster with murder in his blood,
the ostriches that got out once and I had to chase around a field in my Easter dress…
I once had to tell a boy I liked that I couldn’t meet him for a hike until I was finished lancing a boil on the back end of a horse with my dad.
I just stood there holding something he had far too nonchalantly called “the drainage bucket,”
looking at my Swatch Watch as the minutes ticked, questioning my own will to exist.
I can STILL smell the scent of our family trips to the dump.
That smell physically bores holes in your inner being.
They could probably locate evidence of it on my DNA now, if they checked.
It is one with me now. I can still hear the seagulls…
Kerri Green: 1% Dump Run scent.
We built things, and hauled things, and poured buckets of sweat,
and these kids these days act like if they get asked to hang up their clothes on hangers,
they’ve got half a mind to call CPS.
I hated it as a kid,
but now I’m thinking there was a secret to life, and my dad was onto it.
Things got done, and we knew better than to complain, lest the next weekend there was a second page, worst one of all, added to the list.
I might have to instate “Camp Papa” this year.
I’m sure he’s got more than a few Saturday lists still left in him.
A little manual labor for these three girls would be good character development.
“Girls! Come grab a box-cutter, an upholstery needle, and a head-lamp,
and don’t ask too many questions!”
By the look of all these draped girls,
I’ve got a big TV that would look pretty good with a little tape on it.
