First off, let me qualify this column by stating right away that my daughter, Clementine, is pretty damn clever—and not just in the “book larnin’” way, either. After all, she did manage to get through Europe mostly on her own last Winter Break, with all parts and luggage unscathed. And she’s smart in what some people call “emotional intelligence,” too: she has a small, close group of friends that she has managed to hang on to during the tumultuous ride of adolescence and high school. So trust me when I say that I don’t ever really worry about her future, or whether or not she’ll be able to handle “the real world,” (whatever that is). At least, I don’t usually worry about things like that. And then I walk in on her trying to cram something down the sink with both hands, and I kind of do.
In her defense she was trying to use the garbage disposal. I know this because 1) it was on (I could hear it), and 2) the water was running. Unfortunately for both her and for my plumbing the water was running down the opposite sink from the garbage disposal—which I guess kind of made sense, since that was actually the sink Clementine was trying to cram stuff down. (Actually, the word I’m looking for here might be fortunately, since did I mention that she was doing this cramming with both hands? I didn’t know whether to be annoyed that she was trying to clog the sink or relieved that she still had all of her fingers.)
It’s scenes like these that make me hyperventilate slightly when I think about how little time I actually have left to teach her absolutely everything before she is off on her own. Of course it doesn’t help that I thought we had already covered garbage disposals, use of quite a while ago. Not that I had given her a separate tutorial on them or anything: I just kind of assumed that along with learning how to read she had also learned that she should read—and that the easiest way to determine which side of the sink held the garbage disposal was to look and see which side had the words food waste disposal written on it. But apparently I was mistaken in this.
Or who knows? Maybe she did try and read but was just too overcome with the toxic fumes wafting off of the six week old bowl of Lucky Charms she was trying to cram down the sink to be able to make anything out.
I must confess that I also found the Lucky Charms to be quite distracting. So distracting, in fact, that my first question, when confronted with the vision of Clementine trying to clog the sink with them, was not to ask “What the hell are you doing?” but rather, “Why did you put yogurt on your Lucky Charms?” (Of course that was immediately followed with the horrific realization that that wasn’t yogurt. And also the realization that I probably wasn’t going to be eating yogurt—or Lucky Charms—any time soon.)
At this point I think I’m most concerned about how her first college roommate will react to things like the Lucky Charms Incident, and wondering if perhaps I should enroll Clementine in a self-defense class, since there is no way that someone who is not contactually obligated by blood to love her no matter what will be able to resist smacking her for doing things like that.
Or maybe I should save up my money and use it to deal with the next thing, since I’m sure that this probably won’t be the last wtf? moment Clementine experiences during this transition. And also maybe getting the name of a local plumber on speed dial might not be a bad idea.