This morning, as we were rushing about getting ready for the preschool Christmas program, I asked hubby to help the kids brush their teeth.
“I can’t find their toothbrushes,” he said glumly as he stared at the bathroom sink.
I reached over, pointed to the toothbrush holder, and then resumed ironing our clothes.
“Where’s the kid toothpaste?”
“In that basket,” I replied.
He stood staring into the basket, hands hanging at his sides, “I don’t see it.”
“Is your x-ray vision not working this morning?” I ribbed as I moved the curling iron over to reveal the toothpaste.
Through the years, I have discovered that the male species has a distinct inability to locate any object that might be slightly hidden. The only exception to this is the remote control. They will turn the house upside down, flip couch cushions, empty toy boxes, and crawl on their hands and knees, peering under furniture until it is located.
However, they will stare into the refrigerator for ten minutes, “trying” to find the mustard, without moving a single item. Finally they ask, “Where’s the mustard?”
When I reach in and slide the mayonnaise over two inches, it is like a major miracle has occurred. Ta-da! The mustard is revealed!
Teenage boys are actually worse than full grown men. My son even joined a Facebook group called, “No matter how hard I look, my mom always finds it in three seconds.”
I give him very explicit directions for finding things. For example, say he wants to watch some creepy zombie movie, but I have it put away so the cover won’t scare the little kids. I say to him,
“Go downstairs to the family room, walk to the entertainment center, open the second drawer on the right, and look under The Christmas Story DVD.”
He goes and looks, and then comes back so that I can repeat the directions again. And I do, only with more emphasis on words like “right,” “under,” and “downstairs.”
I encourage him to visualize what I’m saying, and to picture himself going through each motion as I describe it. He starts off pretty well, but then I can actually see his brain revert to hoagie sandwiches, the next level of his video game, and ways in which he can be kinder to his sisters. (A mom can dream, can’t she?)
The past few months have been particularly difficult because most of our belongings have been sitting in storage pods in the driveway. It became absolutely pointless to send hubby or son to find things for me. Even sending them together didn’t help. First, I would locate the key, which they could never find even though it was always in the same place. Then they would lift the door open and stand with their hands in their pockets. Perhaps they thought if they stared long enough, the desired object would jump out of its box and run to the house. I could understand if I was sending them to find the Gingerbread Man, but it’s not gonna happen with my heavy-duty Wolfgang Puck skillet.
Eventually, they convinced me that everything I needed was donated to Goodwill by mistake. Until last week. We emptied the storage pods, and one by one, items that absolutely, positively no longer existed, were magically found. (In boxes that were labeled.)
When son doesn’t have any clean socks, I go to his room and immediately produce six pairs. When I notice that hubby has been staring into the kitchen cabinet for ten minutes, I move the crackers so he can see the cookies. Men may think they have special powers that include x-ray vision, but the true super hero is the woman who can locate common household objects in a single bound.
Leave a Reply