Things My Children Have Taken Away From Me

My young daughter approached me this morning and asked me if I had a hair binder. She knew I did, because my hair was up and it was MY hair binder day.

She wanted to wear her hair up and so I gave her the binder. Because in my house, we only have ONE hair binder. I buy hair accessories all the time. I buy the little Goody packages of 25 no-pull hair elastics and a few hours after purchasing them we are back to the same single hair binder. Why is this? I have no idea. Sometimes I resort to putting my hair up with a bread tie.

The other thing I haven’t had in the last 17 years? A pen. If you deliver pizza to my house and I have to sign the credit card slip I will be doing so in crayon or eyeliner. I buy pens all the time. I never, ever have a pen.

The pens are obviously where the batteries are because I have also never had a battery. I have purchased batteries, I have seen what they look like, but I have never actually had one. The same with Band Aid’s. I have bought so many Band-aids over the years, Barbie Band-Aids, Spongebob Band-aids, plain boring beige Band-Aids and I will never ever ever have one, even if I slice my finger and badly need one, because I don’t have any.

I also don’t have any tape. If I purchase a five pack of tape around the holidays I have to hide it so I can have tape to wrap gifts. If I place it in a bag and place this bag in another bag and then place that bag on the highest shelf in my closet behind another bag I will maybe have one roll of tape. Is it possible for tape to walk? Like does it go to where the small humans in my house live and present itself to them?

Hi! I know you wanted me so you could tape pieces of paper into smaller pieces of paper and also to be used for taping doll legs together for some strange reason and I am here for you! I’m tape!

 

Maybe the tape is where the scissors are. Scissors are sharp and they go into the knife block and they are purchased quite frequently but I have never actually seen a pair, except for in photographs when I order them. They are sharp and dangerous and I have no idea where they are, ever. Sometimes I wonder if I should just cut (GET IT?) to the chase and buy my kids some swords because they are larger and possibly harder to misplace.

Or maybe the scissors are where the tape measure is, because I have never seen that either. The paintings in my house are hung at stupid heights and I recently ordered a new sofa that won’t even fit through my doorway because I measured it using the extremely technical method of guessing. I have no idea what my kids are measuring and why they need a tape measure but they frequently inform me that they have grown taller and I sometimes on occasion here the sound of a measuring tape whipping back into its metal housing but when I ask them if they have seen it they look at me like I have lost my mind.

I see boxes of tissue when I go to the market. I see these things in my shopping cart. I see them when I put them away when I return home but that’s the end of it. I sadly blow my nose on scratchy bathroom tissue and even worse, paper towels and I have a feeling there is a stockpile of Kleenex boxes in my house somewhere, like you see on the shows about extreme coupon people. There is no way that three smallish people can go through that much tissue.

Some parents fantasize about what they will do when their kids are away at college or go off and get married and the parents are empty-nesters. They will take vacations and explore new hobbies and spend time doing what they want.

Not me. I’m going to fashion myself a throne out of batteries and tissue boxes, scissors and hair binders and measuring tape all bound together with tape and Band-aids like some greedy Dollar Tree Queen Midas. My scepter will be a pen.

(Image: getty images)