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I recently read a collection of “Two Sentence Horror Stories.” They were all along the lines of that 1970s movie, When a Stranger Calls, where the guy keeps crank calling the babysitter all night long until finally the police call and tell her, “We’ve traced the call… it’s coming from inside the house… get out!” (Even seeing that movie as a ten year old girl I remember thinking, Stellar police work there, boys.) Of course, these modern horror stories were a little more up to date: “There are pictures on your cell phone of you sleeping. You live alone.”

Despite the update, though, the theme remained the same: that terrible clutching fear you get when you realize that even though you thought you were safe within your own house, you weren’t, because unbeknownst to you, you are not alone.

I know that that is supposed to be a terrifying thought, and maybe at one point in my life it still was, but to be honest it is not even in my Top Ten list of things to fear anymore; in fact, I don’t that it’s even cracked my Top 100 lately. And that isn’t just because since having children I never, ever, seem to be alone in the house. (Although that is partially why: it does seem like they are always here. Weren’t they meant to have run away from home at least once by now?) No, it’s because I know that even if there was some sort of crazy axe murderer hiding in my closet he’d probably still make a better roommate than the children I live with now. For one thing, to even fit in the closet in the first place he’d have to clean it up quite a bit, and if you ask me having some guy swing an axe at your head is a small price to pay for a clean closet.

In fact, when I think about all the creepy ways some intruder might threaten and/or terrify me, I realize that they all probably involve cleaning of some sort, and suddenly I become okay with it. Take the shower scene in Psycho, for example: I know for a fact that there is no way anyone would be able to attack me in the shower without picking up at least some of the towels off the bathroom floor. If they didn’t then there would be a good chance that they get their feet all tangled up, and that, coupled with the constantly wet floor due to the fact that neither one of my children seem to understand that the shower curtain goes inside of the tub when they shower, would lead to them tripping, falling, and probably stabbing themselves with their own knife. And how embarrassing would that be? You’d be the laughingstock of the serial murders club.

Or what about that scene in Paranormal Activity (and a million other similar movies) where a malevolent poltergeist messes up a previously clean room in the blink of an eye? Yeah, for me to actually notice that happening I would first need a clean room. I can just picture myself walking into a room that has been paranormally “tossed” only to squeal not in horror, but delight upon finding the t-shirt I had been missing for weeks. I think that reactions like that would probably frustrate any poltergeist so much that eventually they would stop trying to get a reaction out of me by making a mess, and start cleaning up. (I wonder how many times I could scream and run out of a clean room before the poltergeist wised up to me?)

The fact is, it’s hard to terrify someone who has already lived through the ultimate horror movie. After all, what could ever top 12-Year-Old Boy Has Sleepover: The Morning After?

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.

“You don’t understand: things aren’t the same as when you were in school.”

This is the response I get whenever I try to suggest anything about school, or studying, or homework. And yeah, I get it: we didn’t have iPads when I was in school. And of course scientific discoveries haven’t just stood still. But I also don’t get it: I’m pretty sure no one has discovered a new Civil War battle, or a new definition for a restrictive clause. And I’m also fairly sure that no one has yet developed a way of studying that doesn’t involve actually looking at the materials. But most of all, I am absolutely positive that the best way to get the best grades is still the old tried and true “less partying/more studying” route. Of course, that last remark was when I really stepped in it, because it was met with an addendum to the usual, “Things are different now” speech, namely, “And unlike you, I actually have friends.”

Ouch.

To be honest, I wasn’t hurt; I defy you to find anyone who is the parent of a teenager who doesn’t have elephant-thick skin. And I wasn’t frustrated: I know that every piece of “rejected” advice I’ve ever given is not, in fact, discarded, but rather has just begun the arduous process of “sinking in”—just like rainwater has to make its way through dirt, and shale, and limestone before it finally reaches the aquifer, words of advice have to drip through teenage scorn, and doubt, and angst before they finally reach the brain.

No, the emotion that I was feeling was simply chagrin: chagrin that not only don’t they understand the person I was thirty years ago, but that they are so thoroughly convinced they somehow actually do. That, of course, and the fact that they are so utterly and bizarrely wrong. Wrong about me, and wrong about the entire world I was living in. It’s as if they think that instead of living from 1984 to now I have somehow managed to live from 1084 to now. It’s as if instead of trying to argue the merits of flashcards I’m trying to argue the merits of the longbow.

To hear them tell it when I went to school movies cost a nickel, I had to share a writing slate with Abraham Lincoln, and my idea of a fun time was sitting in my room with the shades drawn and the lights off listening to my Janis Ian albums. On my Victrola.

What they fail to understand is that people and places and realities actually change very little in thirty years. Sure, things change on the surface. I look no more like I did in high school than an iPod looks like a Sony Walkman. (Man, I wish my changes had gone in that direction, too.) But just like an iPod and a Walkman both have essentially the same function, 1984 me and 2014 me are still essentially the same as well.

And, as scary as it might be for them to contemplate it, 2014 and 2044 them are still going to be essentially the same. Maybe that’s the real problem: maybe acknowledging that people and problems don’t ever change all that much is just too real. Too scary. Too depressing. Because who wouldn’t like to think that there might be a brand new you—smarter, kinder, way better-adjusted—just around the corner?

Or maybe I’m over-thinking it. Maybe the “things change” speech is really just about getting me to back off with my nagging, a ball thrown in the opposite direction in the hopes that I’ll chase that and not the whole issue of grades. After all, that’s what I would have done, back in my day.

That is, I would have: if we had invented balls yet.

I used to joke that my daughter, Clementine, was not a natural child—or at least was not my natural child. The fact that she was able to do things like walk away from a dessert table without any dessert was my first clue, but really it was when she got older and not only asked for a hairbrush, but also used one on a daily basis that made me start to question her DNA. I don’t know, it’s just that at times like those I always thought back to the moment she was born and remembered how I had my eyes squeezed pretty tightly shut the whole time. Those midwives could have handed me any old baby and I wouldn’t have known the difference.

But then she does something that is so me that I have to rethink those opinions, because there is no way two people could share such similar attitudes and not be related. Case in point: our opinions on “team building.” We both hate it.

I remember five years ago when it first came up: she came home with a permission form to participate in a “Ropes” course, one of those activities where people gain confidence in themselves and faith in their fellows by doing things like climbing to the top of a telephone pole or walking along a tightrope while being supported by the ropes of their teammates (and staff). Or rather, people without a working knowledge of the litigiousness of American society gain confidence in themselves and faith in their fellows, because the rest of us know that the chances of falling (and not being caught) are pretty close to zero. You want to build confidence and trust? Try letting your teammates pilot an overcrowded Bangladeshi ferry while you’re on the lower deck, or maybe let them pick out your dinner for you at a Somali street market. Those are exercises in confidence and trust.

For me the first realization of how much I really despised team building came in college, when I took a class on the anthropology of dance. What started out as a classroom full of people who, at their best were friendly toward one another, and, at their worst, indifferent, ended up being a classroom full of people who actively despised one another—all thanks to the fact that the professor insisted on the entire class starting and finishing each session with a mandatory group hug. (To this day I am not entirely unconvinced that the whole thing wasn’t some kind of bizarre B.F. Skinner-like social experiment, and that the whole point of the class in the first place wasn’t actually to chart our evolution from strangers to enemies.)

The point is that you cannot force a team to build, any more than you can force a friendship to form. And while I appreciate the effort that goes into these kind of things, a better approach, I think, would be to just offer some kind of incentive program to encourage people to get along in the first place. If my anthro/dance class had offered extra credit for being extra friendly, I would have been all over that.

Maybe.

Or maybe I would have decided that I’d rather study extra hard for the tests so that I could “spend” all those extra points on extra snarkiness. In retrospect, it does sound like the more appealing option. At least to me. Clementine, I know, is one of those people who would happily be nice for free. In fact, that’s one of the things we disagree about most frequently: the importance (or not) of being “nice.” (I’ll let you guess which side she’s on.)

And just like that I’m back at square one again: exactly whose baby did those midwives give me, anyway?

I read a story recently about a girl in a small Idaho town who got in trouble for handing out copies of Sherman Alexie’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Well, technically, it was a story about a girl who was supposed to get in trouble, but didn’t, because when the police showed up they pointed out that there aren’t any laws against handing out books, especially on World Book Day, which is when (and why) she was handing out the books in the first place.

The people who called the cops probably thought they had some pull in regards to this book because they were also the same people who had managed to get it banned from the the local school. Apparently they called the cops in the misguided belief that the law is as susceptible to bullying as school boards. Or maybe they just weren’t very smart. Either way, the cops did their job (which was probably pretty easy, seeing as their “job” in this case was to do nothing), the girl handed out the rest of the books, and everyone was happy. Except, of course, for the people who called for the book ban and then called the cops, but, to be honest, they sound like the type of people who are at their most happy when they have something to be unhappy about, so in the end they were probably happy as well.

Which is certainly something the protagonist of Part-Time Indian, Arnold Spirit, could appreciate, seeing as how his sense of humor and love for the ironic are two of the things that likely led to the book getting banned in a small Idaho town in the first place. That, of course, and the fact that at one point in the book he mentions masturbation.

And not in the approved way, either: not in the “I masturbated, and now I must eternally suffer the tormenting flames of hell, oh woe is me, what have I done,” way, but rather in the “Yeah, I masturbate, what about it?”way. The way that (obviously) certain people in a small Idaho town don’t like.

It’s funny, really, because you would think that if you were the type of person who is uncomfortable talking to your kids about masturbation, or even sex in general, then you, of all people, would be the most appreciative of a book that did all of the heavy lifting for you. Because the hardest part of having that conversation is definitely getting it started. There aren’t a lot of comfortable ways to segue into that discussion with anyone, let alone your kids. And then this handy book comes along and does it for you.

But apparently not so much for everyone. Apparently they’re afraid that the book itself will set their kids down the “wrong” path. Funny thing about that, though: if simply reading about something was enough to give you an itch to try those things then I can think of a few other choice books I would keep away from my children first. Books where things like all the first born sons are murdered in a night and when men want to make their surprise guests feel really welcome they let them sleep with their daughters. But maybe that’s just me.

And maybe it’s also just me that thinks that a well-written, critically claimed young adult novel would only contain themes and situations that are already familiar to its readers. Themes and situations they had probably already been eager to discuss.

But what do I know? I don’t even know how to go about trying to get a book banned in the first place. Of course, now that I’ve read about it once, for some reason I am desperate to try and do just that.

Recently, in a fit of pique I posted a Facebook lament that had to do with toilet seats, urine, and boys who either have no courtesy or no sense of depth perception. The response was immediate—and also entirely female. My friend Jane even came up with various urine related facts, such as how there’s a university in Germany that discounts housing fees for men if they sign a pledge promising to always sit down when they pee, because the money they save on not having to replace/repaint the floors, walls and cabinetry more than makes up for the loss in rent money. She also suggested that we all start a campaign to encourage sitting, something along the lines of “March for Sitting” or “Dry Legs United.” I think that’s a brilliant idea, and am just a little bit sad that the yellow ribbon is already taken.

I am also a little bit sad that it has come to this—that we need to consider a freakin’ campaign to encourage half the population to clean up their own bodily fluids. And I can’t help but think that if the situation were reversed—if it were women who, through a quirk of biology, were liable to leave such a trail, than attitudes about it would be different. In fact, if that were the case then I’m pretty sure there would be laws against that sort of thing. But maybe that’s just my bitterness talking—or my wet legs.

I once read a short story about an alien culture where it was considered shockingly intimate to be in the same room when somebody else was eating. They felt about ingesting food the same way we feel about voiding it. Except for the fact that they took it one step further—not only would it make them uncomfortable to watch somebody else eat, it was also considered extremely unsavory to use the same utensils as someone else. I’m starting to think that maybe they had a point there.

After all, as was recently pointed out to me, the only thing worse than sitting on a cold toilet seat is sitting on a warm one. Maybe we should just start carrying around our own toilet seats, the way that people who are very strict about keeping kosher might carry around their own silverware. Sure, it would look a little strange at first, but so do all those Japanese people walking around with surgical masks on, and nobody makes fun of them. To their face. Much.

And who knows? Maybe we could even individualize our toilet seat covers, like people do with their cell phone cases. Although I’m not sure how I would feel about putting the face of my favorite fictional character on my toilet seat. I’m not saying I wouldn’t like it; I’m saying I’m afraid I would like it too much.

Of course, the best part about people carrying around their own toilet seats is that we would have evidence—maybe visual, certainly olfactory—of all of their “hits and misses.” I would hope that being chastised—or even shunned—by the general population would have a greater impact than just one mother shrieking in disgust from the bathroom. Just imagine how hard it would be to talk to your high school crush if you had to hold your toilet seat in your hand the whole time. Or how hard it would be to interview for that coveted grad school internship while still holding the evidence of your youthful deficiencies.

I know that I’m probably enjoying the thought of one half of the population’s impending humiliation way too much, but in my defense: wet legs. Warm wet legs. It’s enough to make anyone want to make a stand against such injustices. Or rather, take a seat.

Whatever. You know what I mean.

Have you ever read a letter in an advice column that was so eerily familiar you suspected yourself of sleep-writing it? That happened to me recently while I was browsing through the latest issue of Hip Mama: I came across a letter asking how the writer should deal with her awesome, intelligent, well-read teenage daughter who seemed to be suffering under the impression that her generation was the first one to discover injustice. And also suffering under the impression that it was her duty to “spread the word” to her poor, benighted family, starting first, as always, with her mom. The author wrote in particular about having her daughter explain the concept of second-wave feminism and white privilege to her—repeatedly, and, for the most part, condescendingly. It was, to use her words, incredibly annoying.

Don’t get me wrong: I have never claimed to be the last word in understanding and tolerance, and I’ll be the first to admit (well, at least in the top ten) that I could use some re-education in some areas. For all that I was a card-carrying (or rather button-wearing) member of the gay/straight alliance as far back as my own high school days, I was still woefully ignorant about anything involving the trans community until my daughter, Clementine, took it upon herself to enlighten me.

And while I do believe that there is such a thing as “white privilege,” I sometimes have to be reminded of that—especially when I’m having one of those days where “privileged” would probably be the very last word I would use to describe myself and my situation.

So yeah, sometimes Clementine has a point. Sometimes I have strayed so far from my radical, hell-raising adolescence that I have forgotten how to feel completely and utterly outraged. But on the other hand, sometimes I really feel like I’m not getting enough credit for time served. And sometimes I want to remind her that you have to take a break from the outrage every now and then to sit back and enjoy the world you are so desperately trying to save.

But I also know that there is nothing more annoying than to be young and idealistic and have some old burn-out tell you, “Yeah, I was just like you once, before I grew up,” and so for the most part I bite my tongue and accept the lecture. I shake my head and cluck sympathetically when she bemoans the lack of people of color and/or size in most magazines, and even nod in agreement when she rails against my favorite TV shows and movies for not passing the Bechdel Test (are there two or more women in it who have names, do they talk to each other, and do they talk to each other about something other than a man).

But I’m also old enough that sometimes I just want to read a magazine, or sometimes I just want to watch a movie, and I want to be able to do both of those things without being lectured—especially by someone who still has to be reminded, after an entire lifetime spent in Flagstaff, to put her empty yogurt cup in the recycle bin. I know, I know, everyone has their pet causes, and it’s probably a hell of a lot more romantic to “man the barricades” over equal rights than recite from memory the difference between number one and number seven plastic, but still: I can’t help that wondering if in twenty years I will be getting a lecture on my recycling habits, and twenty years after that if I will be getting another lecture on the importance of retirement savings.

I shudder to think what magazine that particular advice column rant will appear in. Hip Great-Grandma, perhaps?

It’s spring. For some people that means baseball, for other people it means getting the garden ready, and for a few (a very, very few) it means cleaning. But for the parents of school age children spring only means one thing: standardized testing.

It would be hard to figure out who hates standardized testing more: the teachers who have to waste so much time on it, the parents who have to endure the pleas of the schools to make sure their children show up “fit, tan and rested” on test days, or the students who have to actually take the test. In fact, I think the only people who really like standardized tests are the companies who sell them and the legislators who get to pretend they care about education by ordering them.

In case I haven’t made myself clear, I despise standardized testing. I firmly believe that not only is it micro-managing of the worst sort, but that it also does nothing to improve our schools or our children. If anything, it makes them worse. Think back to all of your favorite memories of your favorite teachers: how many of them involved filling in little bubbles with a No. 2 pencil? No, the memories that stick with us are the ones where teachers went above and beyond to help us learn something, where they taught us with passion and enthusiasm. And that passion and enthusiasm can only come from a true place inside: it cannot be legislated into existence.

I know that we need a way to measure the progress of teachers, students, and schools, but to suggest that there is a “one size fits all” solution to this is insulting to all concerned. There are better ways to determine success, but as is usually the case with “better” ways, that would mean more effort on the part of the people determining the success.

The only true way to measure a classroom’s progress is to measure it against itself: a test that decides that the classroom that went from a 30% average to a 55% average is doing worse than a classroom that went from 75% to 80% is clearly missing the point. As is a test that fails to recognize the difference between a classroom located in a peaceful, middle class neighborhood and a classroom located in a community where the major employer pulled up stakes and left six months previous.

Having said all this I recognize the bind that this puts me, my children, and their teachers in: even though I firmly believe that standardized tests—at least the way they are done now—are useless and damaging, I also know that they are the measuring stick by which schools and teachers are judged. So here’s the dilemma: do I encourage my kids to take and do their best on these tests, knowing that their positive contribution is helping their teachers now, or do I take my children and “opt out,” knowing that ultimately this decision will be helping teachers in the future?

Luckily this year the decision was taken out of my hands, since the middle school AIMS test had the gall to schedule itself right in the middle of not one, not two, but three punk concerts, and we all know that the family that moshes together stays together. There was also this holiday called “Good Friday,” or something that people seemed equally worked up about, so I think some other kids might have missed as well.

I doubt I’ll be fortunate enough to have such a perfect excuse again next year, though, so in all probability I’ll just have to suck it up and make a decision on my own. Or who knows? Maybe the legislature will get their act together and make the right decision for me.

Yeah, I’m not holding my breath either.

When my daughter, Clementine, got her first car last year, we had a few spare keys made. Well, actually, we had more than a few made. Sure, the lady at the key-making kiosk looked at us a little funny when we asked to have nine spares made, but we figured it was better to be safe than sorry. After all, this way we would never have to worry about making another spare key again. This way we could rest assured that there would always be at least one spare key available when we needed one. Because who could possibly manage to lose nine spare keys, right? Yeah, I’m pretty sure you can see where this is going.

That’s right: last month marked the losing of the very last spare key. I think, if this trend keeps up, there might very well come a day when picking up a lost key off of the ground means that you have a one in fifteen chance of owning the key to Clementine’s car. Or, since she swears that every single one of the keys are still in our house—it’s here somewhere, I just had it!—it means that the next time you read about a house being struck by lightning you will probably be reading about mine, since the sheer amount of metal that must be tucked into every nook and cranny of my (not that big) house should be enough to tempt even the most mild mannered of thunderstorms.

At this point the question really becomes not whether or not Clementine is actually learning anything from losing all of these keys, (because how could she not be?) but rather what, exactly, is it that she is learning? Because it’s certainly not “always put your keys in the same place.” Unless she has learned that, and the “same place” she has chosen has been “somewhere in the ether.”

We do have a mysterious hole in our floor that is big enough to accommodate pencils, AA batteries, and green beans, (as my son, Clyde discovered not long after his second birthday). As far as I know, however, this hole doesn’t lead to the ether, but rather to a crawl space under our house. And since this crawl space also contains—according to my husband—the mummified remains of no less than three “cat-like creatures,” it shall henceforth also be known as the final resting place of all those missing pens and AA batteries, at least until such time as the zombie apocalypse makes such things worth more than avoiding a case of the raging heebie-jeebies.

Having said all of that, however, I do not think this hole is big enough for a Toyota key. And if it is, well, then, as far as I’m concerned that’s yet another thing to look forward to during the zombie apocalypse. Speaking of zombie apocalypses (surely the word for multiple apocalypses should be apocali?), I wonder if that will be what finally forces the losing gene out of humans: after all, natural selection would not seem to favor the zombie hunter who is continually misplacing their gun. Although you’d also think it wouldn’t favor the person who continually misplaces the key to the means of their escape, either. But then again, natural selection can be sneaky.

Come to think of it, maybe this isn’t really about Clementine, and what she’s learning, at all. After all, I’m the one who keeps making spare keys. Maybe I’m the one who’s actually being trained. And maybe natural selection isn’t really interested in breeding the losing gene out of children, but rather breeding the finding gene into mothers.

Now there’s a depressing thought for you. I think I’d rather just think about the zombie apocalypse. I wonder how much mummified cats will be going for by then?

I have always been adamantly opposed to the idea of children having rodents for pets. It’s not that I’m scared of them (rodents, that is): on the contrary, I grew up on a farm, and it wasn’t that uncommon to stick my hand into a fifty pound bag of feed at stupid o’clock in the morning only to have an entire mouse convention use my arms, shoulders and hair to evacuate the building. (There is no amount of espresso that can equal that for a wake up call). And it’s not that I think they’re creepy (rodents, that is): every time I watch Willard I root for the rats. No, the reason I am so dead set against having rodent for pets is the smell. I can’t abide the smell of a manky hamster cage.

And yeah, I know: mice and gerbils and hamsters and rats and guinea pigs and sugar gliders and freaking hedgehogs are all “very fastidious,” and given the chance will keep their living quarters so spotless you’ll think they had some kind of vermin OCD. They’ll arrange their exercise tubes into such soul-affirming, feng shui-like sculptures that Martha Stewart would flat out weep with envy. They’ll spend the rest of their short, brutish little lives with a bleach pen in their pockets. If, that is, they are only given the chance.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? They aren’t given the chance. They aren’t given the chance because they are children’s pets, and children are the nastiest, foulest creatures that ever drew breath. “Oh, but given the chance children will keep their living quarters spotless,” said nobody, ever. So yeah, given that I really hate the smell of a dirty hamster cage, and that the only way I could be sure of having a clean hamster cage in my house would be to 1) clean it myself, or 2) never actually put a hamster in it, I have always quite firmly vetoed the idea of ever bringing home a pet rodent.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I walked into my son Clyde’s room the other day and smelled the unmistakeable odor of wet hamster. And imagine how even more surprised I was to find that there was no hamster in the room. None. I checked. Which meant that we were either being haunted by the vengeful spirit of an incontinent hamster, or that Clyde’s (un)natural boy funk is now officially the worst thing I have ever smelled.

I must admit that I was seriously hoping for option number one; in fact, I don’t think I have ever prayed so hard from a visit from the “other side” in my life. Alas, it was not to be. The room was not being haunted by the ghosts of hamster past, present or future. It was, indeed, all Clyde’s funk.

The worst part is that I can’t even tell what it is, exactly, that has ratcheted the smell up to this new level of rankness. Is it the sweaty socks or the sweaty boy? Or perhaps the sweaty socks on the sweaty boy? Or maybe it is something else entirely. For all I know it’s not his fault at all: maybe the cat is peeing on an electrical outlet.

I suppose I could make more of an effort to find out. After all, there are perfumers out there whose noses are sensitive enough to detect all of the different notes in a perfume. Their noses can parse out the hints of vanilla from the touch of frangipani, and even figure out whether it needs more or less primrose. I sincerely doubt, however, that they have ever been called upon to separate all of the different odors in a twelve-year-old boy’s bedroom.

Or if they have, I’m pretty sure they haven’t done it more than once.