You remember that little lesson I gave you on how to manipulate your man into doing what you want him to do?
Oh no, no. Please don’t send payment. I insist. It was my pleasure.
Go ahead and grab a pen though because I need you to jot down a few very important things.
The ‘do it myself method?’ Seems it doesn’t work so well on teenagers. Apparently there’s some sort of miswiring in their brains that prevent them from comprehending guilt or any conscience feeling remotely associated with it.
Weird, I know. I don’t know all the specifics but it has something to do with self-absorption and vanity. That’s not important though. What is important is what I’m about to tell you.
There is a way to coerce the teen species to comply with the needs of the household at large.
The teen in my house, for instance, without fail frequently discards her dirty clothing on the floor of the bathroom. She steps over her wrinkled t-shirts and jeans to exit the bathroom after her shower. She steps back over them in the morning (time and time again actually) as she goes about applying her make-up and vowing to shave her head so as to avoid bad hair days. There her expensive name-brand jeans remain, piled in a heap at the base of the sink (or worse yet but I’ll leave that to your imagination).
How do you remedy this problem?
You hit her where it hurts, of course.
Over the course of this past week I’ve begun collecting said teen’s clothing from the floor. I’ve deposited them into a large bag in my closet. One day soon she will run out of clean underwear jeans. And when she does she will search high and low through the shelves in her closet and the drawers in her dresser. When she does not find them there she will, as a last resort, rummage through her hamper, willing to wear a pair from the depths of it if only to save herself from having to wear a clean, no-name brand. But alas, her search will be fruitless. The jeans, you and I know, will be safely tucked away in my sealed bag, withering in filthy stench with the rest of her haphazardly discarded clothes.
Eventually she’ll come to me, as she always does, and ask if I know what has happened to her clothes.
(Insert sly smile and evil laughter here). This is where we come to the coercion.
When she comes to me, I will hint that I might know a guy who knows a guy who could arrange for the safe return of her cherished Abercrombies. It’ll cost her of course.
I’m thinking along the lines of a quarter for her unmentionables. Fitty cents for the t-shirts. A buck for the sweatshirts. And the jeans? I’ve really got her by the cojones there. Even second-hand market demand says that I could probably go as high as ten, fifteen bucks a pair. But since I’m sorta partial to her I think I’ll cut her a break. Two bucks a pop sounds fair, yes?
That should solve the clothing problem rather quickly I think.
The makeup and assorted styling accessories that clutter the bathroom counter tops?
Hmmm. Perhaps a cell phone ransom is just what the doctor ordered.
I hope Martha is taking lessons. Because this? This, my friends, is how you manage a household.
