I think that my inattentive parenting is finally starting to pay off. A few days without clean school uniforms and my daughter has decided that I can’t be trusted and has begun to do her own laundry. Today my son got sick of waiting for me and pulled out the sewing kit to mend his own pants…if somebody would just take up the slack for that ne’er-do-well tooth fairy, I could retire completely. What? You think I’m lazy? Sure. Lazy like a fox!
I’m trying a new tack these days and am combatting my kids’ natural childhood sloth with a form of passive resistance best termed “deliberate incompetence.” And to be fair, I’m not the one that started it. For years I would wonder how my husband, a competent and intelligent man could stand in front of an open refrigerator and ask me, “Do we have any milk?” To this day, I don’t know how to answer that. Usually, I just sputter and shake my head and refuse to say anything, since I know that the words that come out of my mouth will be bitingly sarcastic and then he will look at me with that sad, hurt face and I will look like a big meanie and have to apologize. Which is a hundred kinds of wrong. Just the other day, he called me at work, pitiful and lethargic, because he thought that I hadn’t made coffee before I left. (I actually had measured out the grounds, put them in the filter and filled the coffee pot with water. I had not, in fact, pushed the tiny silver button to begin the entire process assuming that he would attempt to make coffee for himself and notice that all was in readiness. I know, I know. What was I thinking?)
For the record, I am on to him. I am on to ALL of them. When I found out that my three girls had been walking around a puddle of cat sick in their room for DAYS they all looked at me with big, innocent eyes as if it had never occurred to them that they might want to clean that UP! Ask my sons to fold the laundry and they just roll it into balls before losing interest and wandering away. I’m not stupid and neither are my children, which means that their boneheadedness MUST be deliberate.
So fine. I’m a quick learner and more importantly, love to do nothing. I’m sure that I can muster up a blank stare of incomprehension next time someone asks me, “What’s for supper?” or “Have you seen my shoes?” or “Didn’t we used to have two cats?” I will be unmovable. I will be blissfully ignorant. I will start today, right after I make Kirk’s coffee.
Dang. This might be harder than I thought.
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