Apr 30, 2019 3 min read

I think I may have figured it out. I think I know why babies are so darn cute. I think it’s so we have that image to remember when they become teenagers and the desire to kill them sprouts. (Before anyone gets worked up or calls the authorities, please know that no children were harmed in the writing of this column.) I have, however, gained an appreciation for wild animals who eat their young.

You see, I had need this weekend for a couple items that I should have been able to readily locate in our bathroom closet, but what I found instead was a hot mess. The entire space was in disarray.

While looking, I was required to move the hand soap, the shampoo and the deodorant. In lifting the items, I discovered that several of the bottles and tubes were, in fact, empty or nearly empty. And in that seldom-touched corner? Three tubes of expired sunscreen.

I also found two partial bottles of nail polish remover, three partial bottles of saline solution for contact cleaning, and no fewer than six cans of semi-empty shaving cream on another shelf.

Oh, and apparently we purchase hand lotion, break the seal, pump it only one time before sticking it in the back of the closet and saying we’re out.

We are stocked up on toothpaste to last until the Lord Jesus returns, but please don’t suggest that I donate it, because they’ve all been opened, as well.

I even found a grocery bag full of rubber ducks. I don’t even know where those came from, but I do know that my youngest child is nearly 15 years old. Therefore, I’m hopeful they don’t belong here and that one of my siblings will claim them as belonging to an age-appropriate niece or nephew.

The job took me well over an hour and two large garbage bags, but I condensed what could be, disposed of what should be, and organized what I hoped would be our new system. Perhaps the saddest part of this story is that, by the time I did all of that, I forgot what I had been seeking in there in the first place.

If this is not normal behavior for your teenager, please don’t tell me. Let me live with the dream that I am not alone in this type of struggle. Of course, if you can commiserate with my pain, I’m not sure I want to know that either, as my second dream is that the possibility exists that my newly neat and organized closet may remain so.

And in the meantime, I’m searching for an air freshener called “new baby smell.” You know, just in case.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.