You're Gonna Do What?

   You’re Gonna Do What?

Suzanne Marsh

“You’re gonna to do what? Are you out of your mind?” Words that torched something inside of me. I love challenges. This one I just could not resist. Anyone who has children: that don’t pick up after themselves this does work. For weeks straight Katie had not put her laundry away. Her bedroom looked like a whirling dervish had gone through it. I began to plot my campaign of either pick up your laundry and put it away or find it tied across your bedroom. That fell on deaf ears. I would walk by thinking; ‘hmm I wonder what she would do if I really did tie all her clothes together in a huge X across her room.’ That certainly was food for thought.

I told her Dad what I had in mind:

“Are you out of your mind?”

“No, I bet it will work.”

“Let me get this straight: you want to tie all her clothes in a big X across her room.”

“Yes, dear I do.”

He was absolutely sure at this point that I was nuts. I wasn’t, I was a mother who had had enough.

I had to decide how and when I was going to do this.

Katie had always been the one when told to clean her room would inevitably push toys, dolls, used paper under the bed. I can not begin to count the times I would think; ‘where did the dog leave her bone?’ Answer: look under Katie’s bed. This went on for years, even into her adulthood. I knew sooner or later there would come a time when she would lose something important. It did, she misplaced a term paper. She asked me to help her find it since it was large part of her grade. We started in the closet. Open those doors and prepare for the avalanche of junk and who knows what else to descend upon your person. The next place was under her bed; I pulled out a pair of sneakers with holes in bottom, one slipper. I still have

no idea where the other slipper is. I pulled out several dog bones, one pair of shorts. Two pairs of mismatched socks. The list could go on forever. I had an idea; the only place we had not looked; the garbage. There is something about digging in the garbage that is totally disgusting at best. We started with the garbage pail in Katie’s room, then the kitchen and finally the dumpster:

“Katie, are you sure this is the only other place it could be?”

“Yes, Mom, you are taller than I am. I’ll hold your legs while you go through the garbage.”

“I am not, let me repeat that; I AM NOT DIVING INTO THAT DUMPSTER!!!!”

I did dumpster dive muttering to myself that if I did not find it I was not sure just what I would do. I did locate part of the term paper between greasy spaghetti and some sort of moldy something I could not identify. One of the neighbors, I have no idea who, called the police. Sure enough, there I stood, smelling like sour cabbage:

“Ah, mam, what in the hell were you doing in the dumpster?”

I really did not wish to explain that Katie had lost an important term paper and I was duly elected to climb in the dumpster to find it.

“Simple, officer. My daughter lost her term paper. She apparently either threw it out or

I did when I was cleaning her room. Either way she had to have it.”

The police officer merely gave me one of those ‘are you for real?’ looks as he strode back to his patrol car. If it were only that simple. Katie began furiously retyping the paper. The following morning, she submitted it. She got an “A” and I got new jeans and shirt. There was no way I would ever get the smell of the dumpster off my clothes.

Time marched on; Katie married then divorced. She came home to live with us. The old adage: ‘leopards don’t change their spots.’ Katie had not changed one tiny bit. The only difference was, she was older. The first week she was home, boxes were piled in every corner. Clothes were strewn all over the room. Once again, I knew I would be the one to pick up after her; a mother’s job—not. The following week I helped her put most of her things in an old dresser or hanging them up. One would have thought I had committed a sin of some sort or another. She could be very obstinate when she chose to be, she is like me in that respect. My husband would walk by the room, shake his, close his eyes and mutter: ‘we have got to do something about that child and the constant mess.” It was not falling on deaf ears I assured him. Once again Katie and I were at loggerheads:

“Mom, quit nagging me I’ll take care of these things by myself.”

“Katie if you were going to do so then why haven’t you begun to straighten up this mess?”

“I’m depressed Mom, nothing in my life is right. I really didn’t want to return home but

when Mark threw me out, I had no other choice but to come home.”

I knew I was going to have to do something to snap her out of this. I did not think she was really depressed; she just had no idea how to pick herself up and put her life in order. I had one of those scathingly brilliant ideas, if she wasn’t going to pick up after herself and put her laundry away, especially not in the middle of the floor, then I was going to help her to do so.

The following Saturday while Katie was out shopping, I went into her bedroom. I began to tie shirts and jeans, socks, underwear, any clothes that I found not in drawers or hanging up. Katie returned later that day. She walked into her room, screamed:

“Mom, I did not really think you would do it.”

My husband heard her scream as he calmly strode into the room:

“You’re gonna do what? I thought you were kidding, I guess you weren’t.”