Death by candy wrappers
Nov 4th, 2005 by Accidental Thinker
“Crinkle, crinkle, shwoooop,” said the vacuum cleaner.
“What was that?” asked my mom, who heard the unmistakable sound of a candy wrapper being sucked into oblivion from clear across the house.
“Uh oh,” thought Aunt Marge*.
Poor Aunt Marge. It wasn’t her fault. She was only trying to help. Little did she know, that single sucked up candy wrapper would result in one of the worst coming-home-from-school experiences I can remember.
I, on the other hand, knew better. I knew I wasn’t supposed to have food in the bedroom. I also knew that when I inevitably broke that rule, I certainly wasn’t supposed to leave the empty wrappers lying around to be discovered. What was I thinking? I mean, surely I had heard of a garbage can by then? But candy wrappers and empty potato chip bags left in the garbage can in my own room would have been a sure-fire giveaway, come trash night, that I had disobeyed, and I was too lazy to seek out an appropriate receptacle in a non-rule-breaking location, like the kitchen. So I did what any red-blooded American kid would do. I hid the evidence of my sins under the bed.
Such was the state of my room at that inopportune moment when Aunt Marge charged in with the vacuum cleaner, eager to earn her keep as a visiting houseguest. As soon as she heard the sound of that crinkly paper being sucked into the central vacuum line she knew, she says these many years later, that I was in for it.
And in for it I was. My mother swooped in out of nowhere. One look at my room of course did nothing to appease her anti-candy-wrappers-in-the-vacuum mood. So in one of her finest “Mommie Dearest” moments**, she methodically set to work.
I wasn’t there to witness the actual deconstruction of my room, so I can’t say for sure, but I suppose she started with the closet. She raked everything out into the middle of the floor, and I do mean EVERYTHING. I’m sure there wasn’t even a piece of lint left in there. She moved on to my dresser drawers, dumping them out on top of the closet contents, then left the empty drawers sitting on top of that. These items were soon joined by more that resided under my bed or on any other surface within reach. By the time she was done, if it wasn’t a piece of furniture, it was in a heaping pile of mangled mess that consumed my entire bedroom floor.
Such was the new state of my room when I arrived home from school that ill-fated afternoon. I don’t think my mother said a word about it as I walked back to my doom. She didn’t have to. I knew I was in big trouble the moment I saw the sheer devastation. Talk about shock and awe! One thing you can say definitely about my mom—she knows how to make her point. I don’t remember how long it took to undo the damage. Probably days. I do remember shedding many tears at the unfairness of it all. Where do you even BEGIN to clean up something like that? Somehow I found a way, because I’m still alive to tell the tale.
I learned a valuable lesson that day, but I don’t think it was the one Mom intended. The lesson I learned wasn’t “Don’t break the rules,” but rather, “Do a better job of covering my tracks.” I guess mother really does know best, though, because I never again let my room get so bad that I had to endure another such catastrophe.
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*Special thanks to Aunt Marge for reminding me of this story after reading my entry about sitting on the spot.
**My mother isn’t really Mommie Dearest, though I’m sure I thought so at the time. It’s a family joke, and it’s how she always refers to herself when she leaves messages on our answering machine. Hi, Mom!
Excellent, Monique! I enjoyed from the first sentence.
Do it again.
And by the way, you would have fit right in–growing up at our house.
Whoa! My real name isn’t Lucy. One of my daughters picked that as a blog name for me because I’m a fuss butt about having a clean house. (Like Lucy in Peanuts is a fussy person.) But, boy, I NEVER would have done what your mom did!
Of course, that’s because I wouldn’t have trusted anyone to clean it up but me.
Rats! I hate it when I find typos AFTER people have been here leaving me comments! Typos fixed. At least the ones I spotted.
Paul: thanks for compliment.
TLP: I’d have said my mom would never do such a thing either, except I’m here to tell you it really happened. I learned my lesson though and in retrospect it makes a great story.
Yikes!
Well, your mom DID spend a lot of time, energy, effort, sweat, and pissed-offness in that room…so, maybe you got the better of her when she found NOTHING else!
What a story, Monique!
That’s a pretty drastic way of making a point. Effective, but extreme. LOL
Tough lesson learned! Haha! My mom did the same many times, I just never seemed to “get it”
Have A great weekend!
Lois Lane
Your mom is one tough cookie!
When she said no eating in your room, she obviously meant it.
My son has a collection of partially drunk water bottles strewn throughout his room, as well as tell-tale crumbs of what used to be food. It’s obvious I don’t have that rule.
When my kids are told to clean their rooms, they do a good job, so I’m okay with it.
Well…. on the flip side of the coin… you could have a mother like mine who just made me shut the door so she wouldn’t have to see my room. However, instead of candy wrappers under the bed, I had empty beer cans stashed up under the ceiling tiles. hmmmmm. oh well, we both turned out FINE, didn’t we? 😉
I was lucky…. my parents were rather slobs themselves, so there was no “clean your room” pressure.
But… there was the time Mom found the Playgirl magazine…………..
🙂
Well I guess you did break her in a little for me. I remember when I came home from school one day only to find “Mommie Dearest” standing in the middle of the driveway awaiting my return. This being only 2 days after Daddy caught me smoking I knew I was in for some real trouble. I wasn’t even allowed to see the “crime scene”. I was instead directed to a “holding cell” (otherwise known as a chair at the kitchen table) and instructed not to move until my father came home.
Of course this had to all happen on a night where Daddy was working late! So about 4 hours later he finally walks in the door with a face more angry than I had ever seen in my life! Apparently he had sent Mommy into my room to search for the evidence. She must have received a new and improved mom-radar the previous Christmas, because instead of raking everything into the middle of the floor it seemed as though she knew exactly where to look for everything. They had the evidence all lined up in front of me. There was no getting out of this one, even if i denied that the lunchbox thermos found under my bed was filled with fermented Jack Daniels. (Daddy threatened to take it to the lab for testing, so I fessed up.)
This is why I associate the word “grounded” with my entire high school existence.