SILENCE! Your Evil Overlord Speaks…

There is a new law in the Den. Thus sayeth the Evil Overlord: If thou leavest thy toys upon the floor for a period exceeding a reasonable clean-up time, behold! The Evil Overlord shall call down the Wrath of the Hefty Bag upon thy miserable head! Thy toys shall be scooped therein, regardless of psychological or monetary value, and given away at My earliest convenience to a Worthy Cause.

Thus it is written, thus shall it be.

HAIL PHARAOH!

{cymbals clash, palm fronds wave frantically, buff and tanned servants hurriedly prepare fruity beverages with copious amount of vodka}

Ahem. You may be wondering what has brought on this particular bout of Egyptian-themed madness.

Then again, you probably know exactly what has brought me to this state of pissed-off-ness.

Boo Bug and Danger Mouse were sent up hours ago to clean their rooms. As they have been every afternoon for about four days now.

Every night, I have gone into their bedroom at bedtime to discover a floor so covered in toys and whatnot that you literally dare not enter the room barefooted. I walk down the darkened hallway like a soldier crossing a minefield. I have become accustomed to walking like a flamingo picking its way across a swamp through the upstairs of the Den, because of all the toys scattered all over the floors.

The battles have raged. I have used commanding, pleading, bribing, timers, ‘making a game of it’, everything I could think of to impel my darling children to clean up their @*^&@ing living space.

Because people, I have enough to do without following all four of them around picking up their detritus. Just keeping the front hallway and kitchen areas reasonably clear is a full-time job – the kids’ bedrooms, IMHO, should not be my responsibility as well.

This afternoon, I snapped like a dried up twig run over by a mountain bike ridden by a 220 pound Marine.

We had nagged those children for literally two hours to clean up that room. They had come down protesting that they were ‘done’. Yet when I staggered upstairs for a little R&R (and to get away from Mr. Pissy, who has been crying, shrieking and otherwise unreasonable for several hours now and is really irritating me), I followed a trail of unimaginable clutter to their bedroom, where I was confronted with a scene right out of How Clean Is Your House. I shrieked, I saw red, I became enraged and then…

::CRACK!::

With a cold heart that knoweth neither forgiveness nor mitigating circumstances, I just got done with the first pass. I made three piles: clothing, trash, and toys. The dirty clothing more than filled their hamper (and explained what had happened to most of the clothing they had missed last week). The trash filled the (admittedly small) bathroom trash can three times. And the toys?

One box that once delivered 20 pounds of broccoli to a supermarket, and a large trash bag.

Among the items going to charity: Several brand new Bratz dolls, only just received this very week by Danger Mouse for her birthday. She has begged and pleaded and hinted and otherwise wanted those dolls for at least six months.

But when she learned they were in the box to go to charity? ::shrug::

Evil Overlord’s response? {KAAAAABLOOOOEY!!!!!!}

Maybe I am overreacting. Maybe I am just a touch too tired. I took Advil PM last night and you know what? It didn’t work. Not only was I not able to get to sleep until midnight, I then woke up at 2:00 and had trouble getting back to sleep. Third night in a row of this @(^&@, so possibly I am not at my most rational right now.

And then I decided it was entirely necessary to lay down 50 cubic feet of redwood mulch around my rose bushes today. My back, she is screaming. And my left hand will not tolerate any knitting, which is not helping my mood much.

But honestly…I find this to be deeply disturbing behavior from my children.

When I was a child (oh Lord, here it comes), I was hardly deprived in the toy department – but I sure as heck valued my toys.

I played with my Barbies (more or less) gently. I dressed them. That was the whole point. You took the doll and gave her a personality and you dressed her in clothes appropriate for whatever imaginary Event said doll was attending, and you played through the Event, and then she changed clothes for the next Event.

My children strip all the clothes off Barbie, cast them onto the floor, and then leave the nekkid Barbie lying in the middle of the hallway for days and days. It’s almost as if the entire point of their toys is merely to drag them out into the middle of the floor.

If my mother had done what I just did, I would have howled fit to raise the dead, and gone into a severe depression, and complained to my father (always a soft touch and a good ally when mom was on a rampage), and otherwise done anything I could, promised any crazy thing, to get them back. And I would have made good on the promises…for, uh, a while, anyway…

My children? **yawn** “So, does that mean I don’t have to clean my room now?”

What the @^*&@*^&@!?!?!?!

Are they really so…I don’t know, what is it I’m looking for here? It’s like…they are so blessed that they don’t realize it? They have so much that they can’t appreciate it? What they want is so easily obtained that they don’t value it when it arrives?

I feel like we’ve gone wrong somehow. They just have too much, and they value nothing.

It upsets me, because for me one of the most valuable lessons I was ever taught was to appreciate what I have. It’s why I about dissolve into giggles about Homer the Odyssey (oh, I love that minivan so much) (heh…and I once said ‘death before minivan’…), and caress my various musical instruments lovingly every time I walk past them, and darn near kiss my iPod shuffle before I clip it on while cleaning. I think of how many people are worrying about having food today, and I stop for a moment to thank $DEITY that I have a minivan to wash, that I am wealthy enough to be fretting about having to dust all those stringed instruments sitting and hanging in my front room, that I am so vastly blessed that I have to remember to plug in my iPod to recharge at night.

I see my children being deprived of this. I see them taking everything they have for granted. I see their lives becoming shallow, empty of simple appreciation and perspective.

I know, they’re young. I know this is something that time and experience teaches better than parental nagging. But still…well.

I’m upset. I’m more upset that they are so blasé about losing toys they have professed to love just ever so much. It infuriates me more than any amount of backtalk or outright sassing.

I think of all the children right here in this very town who would be ecstatic to have even a quarter of what my children are allowing to be discarded without a second glance, and…well. Let’s put it this way: I’m taking these boxes of perfectly good, brand new or nearly so toys to a local family shelter.

Maybe when my little ones have lost a few kilos of playthings, they’ll start to value them a little more. And meanwhile? Some children who really do have little or nothing will score some trendy, cool new friends to keep them company in unfamiliar territory.

So it is written. So it shall be.

Hallelujah.

Amen.