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By the time you read this, I should be in the middle of doing something I swore I would never do again. No, I’m not having another child, although that might actually be a less painful option. I am going to drive for eight hours straight in a car with my children. With my children, I might add, on the inside of the car.

I know, I know: after the last road trip I swore I would never do this again. After the last road trip I swore that the only way I would ever travel more than 200 miles with both of my children in the same vehicle was if they could be kept more than twenty feet apart from each other the whole time, and, up until now, this has been a promise I have managed to keep. Since the last ill-fated road trip we have only travelled on planes, and since I’m the one booking the seats, I have always been able to get the sets as far apart from each other as possible without one child sitting in the cockpit and the other in the rear galley. Actually, it is easier to do this than you might think: it is a simple matter of, upon check-in, when the ticket agent asks you if you would like to have all of your seats together, responding with a resounding “HELL, no.” They usually understand once you explain to them that it’s a safety issue: if you are forced to sit next to your bickering children for the next several hours there’s no way you would be helping anyone with their oxygen mask if trouble should happen to arrive.

A few years ago I had the perfect solution to the bickering on car trips problem, and it was, if I do say so myself, brilliant. I simply bought a HUGE bag of candy at the beginning of the trip, and then told the kids that the entire bag would all be theirs at the end of the trip. That’s all—no threats, no promises. Just that. And then, the first time they started to bicker, I grabbed a big handful of the candy and threw it out the window. (Of course, there was the problem of littering—if only I had been able to find candy in biodegradable wrappers.)

Anyway, that was a great solution while it lasted, but the problem is that now that my kids are older, candy doesn’t really hold their attention the way it once did. And there’s no way I’m going to go down the road throwing out handfuls of video games, CDs, and cold hard cash. (Although sometimes it feels like that’s exactly what they do.)

Luckily, though, I recently came up with another idea, just as brilliant as the one before, and just in time for this trip. And even better, this idea doesn’t cost me anything at all, except maybe for a few bottles of hydrogen peroxide to get out the blood stains.
That’s right: I’m going to pick up a hitchhiker. Not just any hitchhiker, mind you, but a scary one. One that, if you saw him waiting by the side of the road you would think, “Who would ever pick up that guy?”
Well, now you know who would—me.

Just think about what a powerful discouragement to fighting having a potential murderer in the backseat would be. Every time someone started to bicker, or whine, all I would have to do is say, “Now, now kids—you don’t want to upset Mr. STABBY,” And, after a few little cuts (just minor ones, I’m sure—no arteries or organs), there would most definitely be peace and quiet in the back seat. Or at least quiet.

And, on another positive note, if things went terribly wrong, unlike candy wrappers, bodies are always biodegradable.

There is only one thing more annoying than walking into a room where everybody is staring mindlessly at the television, and that is walking into a room where nobody is staring mindlessly at the television. What I mean to say, rather, is that there is nothing more annoying than walking into a room where the mindless television is on, but no one is watching it. This happens at my house with disturbing frequency, especially around one o’clock in the morning, after everyone (living) has gone to bed. (I say living because the only explanation I can come up with for this phenomenon is that there’s a ghost in my house with really bad taste in television. Really, really bad taste. Home shopping network bad. Lifetime movie-of-the-week bad. Oprah bad.)

How we got stuck with a Jerry Springer-loving ghost, I have no idea, although I will say that the fact that our house has existed for at least a hundred years might have something to do with it. After all, it’s not likely that every resident for the last century limited their viewing to Masterpiece Theatre and the Nature Channel—although, if you asked most (living) people what they watch, that’s all they’ll ever admit to. (It’s amazing that shows like “Bride Wars” and “Toddlers in Tiaras” get renewed year after year, because to hear people talk about them you would think that the only way anyone even knows of their existence is because they flipped past them once while trying to find that special on spotted lemurs. Apparently, all of the Nielsen houses are filled with ghosts as well.)

But, to give our ghost the benefit of the doubt, maybe he was one of those select, elite few who really did watch nothing but “educational television” his whole life. Maybe, before he died, he was the type of person who kept a copy of the PBS guide right next to his favorite TV chair. (My grandfather did.) Maybe it was only after his death that his taste for trashy TV became so dominant. In fact, maybe that’s how it is for everyone—maybe, no matter what your taste was like in the corporeal world, in the afterlife you become a Twihard.

This would explain why all of the early morning TV-watching ghosts I have ever encountered, in all of the houses I have ever lived in, have all watched such dreck: it’s just part of being a ghost, like wearing sheets and saying “Boo!”. It’s almost as if after you lose your corporeal self, you also lose your mental gag reflex. I don’t know: all I know is that never, not even once, have I walked in on a television playing to a room of none and seen anything on the screen that didn’t make me want to hold one hand over my eyes, another over my nose, and the other two over my ears. Wait, that’s too many hands. Anyway, you get the point.

Of course, I suppose it is possible that it was some human who was responsible for leaving the TV tuned to the especially awful channels—that is was the living people in my house who did it, and not the ghost. To tell you the truth, though, I’d rather think it was a ghost. I’d rather think my house was the victim of some malevolent inhabitation than think that anyone I either married or gave birth to is capable of watching more than ten seconds of “The Bachelorette.”

And so, I think I’ll just stick with my ghost theory. After all, it’s much easier to forgive someone that doesn’t exist anymore. Now if I could only get the ghost to stop leaving potato chip crumbs in the couch, I’d be all set.

Here’s what gives me nightmares: picture a high security lab, somewhere deep inside the bowels of the earth. Inside a sealed box in a clean room sits an open jar of the last known surviving sample of the deadliest virus in existence. A cute young scientist with pink hair reaches her hands into the protective rubber sleeves, and then slowly picks up the lid—once this lid is securely tightened, the sample will be disposed of, and humanity will finally be safe from this virulent scourge. There is a slight rasp as the lid is screwed on the jar, and the other scientists behind her let out their collective breath in relief.

“Open the door,” one says to the girl with the fuchsia hair; obligingly she hops up and swings open the heavy door between the clean room and the control room. As she does, one of the rubber gloves knocks against the jar of the deadly virus, which topples over. The lid, only loosely secured, springs off, letting the virus into the air.

Twenty eight days later, and we’re all zombies.

Yeah, that’s the thought that keeps me up at night. Why? Because, in my vision, the technician is always Clementine. And, as anyone who knows Clementine can tell you, she has never, ever successfully put a lid back on anything. Ever.

Reach for a bottle of sparkling water in my house and the first thing you notice is that the lid is only perched lightly—jauntily, really—on top of the neck. The second thing you notice, of course, is that the sparkling water has lost its sparkle.

The same can be said of gallons of milk, jars of pickles, tubs of cream cheese—anything, in fact, that has a lid. The worst part is that she’s actually doing better: she used to throw the lids on the floor after she opened something, like a bridegroom with a bottle of tequila at his bachelor party. Now at least she gets them in the right area, even if she hasn’t actually mastered the art of actually putting them all the way on.

Unfortunately, though, I think that’s as far as she will ever go, because, according to her, she truly is tightening the lid. The fact that there is salsa running out the fridge door after she puts it away is just a coincidence: she certainly tightened it all the way. Yes, she is positive about that.

Which brings me back to my zombie nightmare.

I’m sure you’re thinking, well, why would someone with lid issues end up working in a clean lab in the first place? But really, isn’t that the way these things always work out? Doesn’t the kid who could never master the fine art of toast-making end up being the one who goes to culinary school? And doesn’t the kid who always callously stepped over their bleeding siblings to grab the remote end up going into medicine?

And so, following that logic, it only makes sense that Clementine will one day seek out a job that will involve her successfully putting the lids back onto jars every single time, because, in her whole life, that is the thing she is worst at. So, like the future doctor and chef, it’s kind of inevitable.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, however, while it’s true that an unsuccessful chef or doctor also has the power to kill us, they can only kill us in small numbers. Clementine the Scientist, however, will have the potential to take us all out someday. The way I see it, we have about twenty years to save ourselves: twenty years to convince her to change her ways, and finally learn how to tighten a lid, or it will be the end of life as we know it.

Actually, this might be a good time to take up smoking.

I’ve always been kind of leery of the argument that sugar makes kids hyperactive. Maybe it’s just the word itself: hyperactive. As if there’s one level of activity that is acceptable, and all other levels are either above or below that. (Speaking of below, why don’t we have a word for underactive kids—something like hypoactive? We could even pronounce it hippoactive, to better describe what the kids are going to look like after they spend an entire summer parked on the couch.) But back to the word we already have. Back to hyperactive.

Someone asked me once, watching Clyde vibrate from one part of our house to another, if I thought he had ADD. I looked at him, moving so fast he was almost a blur, and then I looked at his sister, Clementine, who had been sitting in the same spot reading a book for the previous two hours, and I said, “ADD? No, I think he just has a bad case of B-O-Y.” (Not that his sister was being hypoactive, mind you. She was just conserving her energy so that the next time Clyde’s peregrinations sent him within her sphere she would be able to reach out and smack him upside the head.)

I feel the same way about people who assume a link between out-of-control kids and sugar. When I see kids spinning in place at a birthday party or county fair, I don’t immediately assume that it was the fruit punch or the cotton candy that put them in that state. Instead, I think that maybe that’s just what they’re like—or at least what they’re like when they’re at a birthday party or fair. In other words, maybe it wasn’t the cake and ice cream that made them bounce off of the walls, but the fact that Spiderman showed up at the party—with a pony. And maybe it wasn’t the Sno-Cones and churros that caused them to act like they had been fast-forwarded at the fair, but rather the fourteenth trip around the Tilt-a-Whirl that did it.

That has always been my theory, at least. And it’s a good theory. A sound theory. One that I always believed would hold up under the most rigorous scientific scrutiny. Which is why, recently, when I was given the opportunity to put it to the test, I did. In other words, I let Clyde keep the entire bag of fundips he came home with the other day—all twenty-eight of them—all in the interest of scientific inquiry. (For those of you not up on all your candies, a fundip is a packet of sugar you eat with a candy stick. In other words, sugar dipped in sugar.)

I’ll admit I had some misgivings: looking askance at Clyde’s bag full of sugar and dye, suddenly I knew how Columbus must’ve felt sailing towards the end of the known world. It’s one thing to have a theory; quite another to test it. And yet, as a true believer in the scientific method, test it I did, that very evening at Movies on the Square. And then, vindication: as I watched Clyde vibrate from one end of Heritage Square to the other with a pack of his equally-hyper friends, I thought to myself, “Well, at least he’s no crazier than any of those other kids—the ones with responsible parents—I mean the control group.” And I kept on thinking that, all through the movie and halfway home, when, curious, I asked Clyde exactly how many fundips he had consumed that evening.

“I dunno,” he said. “I decided to share the bag with everyone else.” And then he shot off on his bike at something approaching the speed of light. And I was able to test out yet another one of my pet theories: the less his friends’ parents know, the better—at least for me.

Question: how many glasses of water does it take for the average child to stay hydrated on a hot summer’s day? One? Four? Infinity minus one?

The truth is, no one really knows the answer to that question, because no one has yet managed to build a cabinet big enough to hold more glasses than one child can use on a typical summer’s day. So all we really know so far is how long it takes the average child to pull out and use the last glass, which, depending on the size of your cabinet, can be anywhere from five minutes to two hours. (Five minutes being the number for an average-sized cabinet, like mine, while two hours would be the time it takes them to empty out a cabinet the size of a Prius.)

You’d think that this would be a good thing: after all, Flagstaff is the second driest city in America, so it’s probably for the best that the children of Flagstaff have taken responsibility for keeping themselves hydrated. You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But, of course, you’d be wrong. Because while the children of Flagstaff are taking the glasses, and filling those glasses, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they are actually drinking the water from those glasses.

Here’s a typical scenario: a child walks into kitchen, gets a glass of water, fills it to the top and either takes one sip and sets it down or wanders away, takes one sip, and then sets it down. Five minutes later, the same child comes back into kitchen, gets another glass, fills it with water, and then repeats the process. This continues until all of the drinking glasses are dispersed throughout the house.

Once there are no more clean glasses to use, the child will then pick up a “used” glass—one that is full of water—dump that water into the sink, rinse the glass out with approximately three more gallons of water, fill it up again, take one sip, and then set it down. Another child (or sometimes even the same child) will then come along, pick up the full glass, and repeat this process. Over, and over, and over again.

There are two things about this that bother me. One, of course, is the waste of water: I swear I can her the water table drop a foot every time a child goes into the kitchen. But the other thing is the unspoken suggestion that, apparently we are raising the worst generation of pessimists since the Great Depression. I mean, think about it: why are all these kids so suspicious of their fellow man? Why do they feel that they cannot leave a glass of water unattended for five minutes without something nasty happening to it? Because, you know, the glass is only sitting on a counter (or table, or bookshelf, or dresser) in my house. It’s not like it’s in some dark corner of a sketchy rave in the warehouse district of Detroit, presided over by a guy named “Lucky.”. And it’s not like there’s some guy waiting in my bathroom with a bathtub full of ice, cooling his heels until the knockout drops take effect before he can start removing kidneys.

Of course, maybe they’re not afraid of some random guy slipping them a roofie; maybe what they’re really afraid of the house itself. Maybe they’re afraid that some sort of unintentional and unnoticed filth will slipped into their unattended drink. But that’s just ridiculous, because the only way a glass of water could become contaminated just by being exposed to the air in my house would be if my house were filthy, a complete sty, a fetid pit filled with the stench of . . .hey.

On second thought, maybe I’ll just get a fresh glass from the dishwasher my own self.

The sensation was unmistakable and familiar: my eyes were stinging, my throat was closing, and it felt like all of the hairs in my nostrils had spontaneously combusted at once. Yes, there was no doubt in my mind: I had been Axe murdered. In other words, I had inadvertently wandered through the mist of a recent Axe-ing, the same way in the movies the hero always wanders through the giant spider web whenever they’re exploring a cave. In the movies, though, the spider-webbing is invariably followed by the appearance of a huge, vicious spider. In my case, the Axe-ing is always followed by the appearance of a huge teenage boy. A friendly one. Or, at least, one who is planning on making friends with someone soon.

I have to hand it to the marketers of Axe body spray: they obviously did their homework when it came to researching their demographic. Who else knew there was an entire generation of teenage boys out there who were just waiting to be told that all of their problems could be solved by the push of a finger? And then another push. And another. Oh, go on, push it one more time—what can it hurt? After all, if a little bit is good, a lot must be even better, right?

The great poet William Blake once said, “How can I know what enough is until I have had too much?” Of course, even with this motto he was rather infamous for not being a very good judge of his own limits; in other words, he usually didn’t know what too much was until somebody else (like his wife) told him. Unfortunately (in this case only), teenage boys don’t have wives—they have mothers. And so it is left to the mothers to tell their sons that they smell like the results of a cheese truck driving into a brothel in the middle of August.

Because that’s the worst thing about Axe and all of its imitators: some boys—in a misguided (and lazy) attempt to try and cover up that distinctive teenage boy funk—use them not in addition to showering, but instead of. Which is just wrong: as another great poet also famously once said, “Before you even put on your silk shirt and fat gold rope, please take your big ass to the bathroom and please use (a little bit of soap).”

Of course, telling their sons they reek like a cathouse is difficult for mothers on many different levels. One, it comes dangerously close to addressing the reason boys are dousing themselves with cologne in the first case: to pick up girls. (For many mothers, the thought of their sons being interested in girls makes them want to stick their hands in their ears and go lalalala). Two, in many instances these are the same mothers who have been following their sons around the house with a stick of deodorant since the boys were nine; it goes against the grain to now start telling them to stop with it. And three, many of the mothers of teenage boys today came of age themselves in the era of “feminine deodorant spray,” and so understand all too well the irrational urge to cover up any lingering human smells with the push of a button. (Tellingly, these products were always advertised as guaranteed to take care of those special “feminine” odors that may occur on days when you are not feeling so “fresh” down “there.” And, yeah, the ads were that vague.)

Of course, despite the ad campaigns, most of us learned moderation when it came to pushing that button, and I have no doubt that the teenage boy contingent will one day learn this, too. I only hope that I still have nose hairs left by then, though.

Personally, I blame coffee table bumpers. You know, those curved pieces of foam you’re supposed to wrap around the edges of your coffee table as soon as your baby starts to walk, so that when they fall down they don’t gash their little heads open on the sharp edges? Yeah, those things. An entire generation has been raised with coffee table bumpers, which means that an entire generation has gone through their toddling years almost completely free from blunt force head trauma.

On the surface, of course, this sounds like a good thing. But then again, human history is rife with ideas that sounded good at the time, only to turn out, in the end, to be not quite so brilliant after all. Take dynamite, for example. Or kudzu. Or the Jonas Brothers.

Coffee table bumpers, I believe, fall into the same category. Why? Because somehow, by preventing that first blow to the forehead, they also prevent the necessary formation of common sense. How does this work? I have no idea: maybe the on/off switch for common sense is located in the frontal lobe. In any case, I’ve thought long and hard about possible explanations for the lack of common sense in the current generation of children, and that’s the best I’ve been able to come up with so far.

Coffee table bumpers.

I know, I know: it isn’t like me to make sweeping generalizations about this or any other generation; my usual take is that people—and children—have been the same since the dawn of time. Cave mothers were probably complaining about having to pick saber-tooth tiger skins up from off of the cave floor, and Roman Centurion fathers were probably coming home from a long campaign of decimating the Visigoths, only to freak out when they see what the kids have started wearing back home. And don’t forget about the shock and disgust that went through the 19th century Viennese community when kids started doing that crazy immoral dance called the waltz.

But I don’t know. I think there really might be something to my suspicion that the current generation is seriously lacking in the “common sense” department. I mean, I know a boy who is within 18 months of having the right to vote, yet who still firmly believes that he will be the proud owner of a tiger someday. A tiger. (And no—he doesn’t plan on joining the circus. Or Siegfried and Roy).

He can’t be reasoned out of this belief, either. When you point out to him the cost, the inconvenience, and the danger, he ignores you. Even when you point out that this arrangement would, in all likelihood, not be enjoyable for the tiger, he hears nothing. All he says is that it’s his dream, and he plans on pursuing his dream. “Aim for the moon,” he says. “At least then, when you miss, you’re still in the stars.”

I want to point out that, technically, if you aim for the moon and miss you’re left floating in the vacuum of space. And also that it would take you hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years to float on over to the nearest star, unless you floated over to our star, the Sun, in which case you would die a fiery painful death. And then I’d like to point out that even if you did manage to land on the moon, there’s be no oxygen to breathe, so you and your tiger would last about two minutes (maybe longer for the tiger, actually).

I want to to point all of this out to him, but then again, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I know I’m not doing him any favors, but for some reason I just can’t set him straight.

Sigh. Stupid coffee table bumpers.

The torrent of water sounded like the Army Corps of Engineers had just opened a levy in my bathroom. After listening to it flow for almost ten minutes, I finally poked my head around the corner to see who was using the shower, only to find . . . no one. No one at all. Just a shower running all on its lonesome, steam billowing over the curtain, water uninterrupted on its flow from the shower head to the floor of the tub, in much the same way I envisioned money flowing uninterrupted from my wallet to the bank account of the city water department.

Looking around for the culprit, I only saw one lone teenager calmly eating a bowl of cereal—from the size of the bowl, and the remnants of cereal in the bowl, it looked like he had been there for quite some time.

“Do you know who’s taking a shower?” I asked, thinking he might have seen the culprit leaving the bathroom.

“Yeah,” he answered between leisurely mouthfuls. “Me.”

“You’re taking a shower?” I restated, confused. “But you’re right here. Eating a bowl of cereal.”

He looked at me like I was a little slow, and I wondered if I was about to hear some new theory of relativity, one that finally explained how it might be possible for one person to be in two different places at the same time. What I got, though, was not nearly so illuminating. “Yeah. I’m eating this, and then I’m taking a shower. I’m waiting for the water to heat up.”

I looked at the steam that was now billowing out of the bathroom and into the living room, and suddenly I had a vision of dollar bills not just climbing out of my wallet and singing and dancing on their way to the water department, but to the gas company as well. “It’s hot,” I said.

“’kay.” Another slow bite of cereal. Careful chewing. Swallowing. The spoon dipped down again and finally I could take it no longer.

“Either get in the shower or turn off the !@#$ water!” I shouted.

With a look that spoke volumes about the unreasonableness of adults, he put down his spoon and sidled into the bathroom, his whole demeanor clearly conveying his disgust at my effrontery. All of a sudden I experienced a flash of deja vu, followed by the urge to call my mother and ask her how it is that every time she comes to visit me she doesn’t run around my house gleefully turning on all of the faucets in revenge.

I’m not sure exactly when I changed—maybe it’s just the natural result of having to pay for things myself—but lately it seems like everything has a price tag attached to it. It’s like once I became an adult I was issued special glasses that turned the whole world into a gigantic “Price Is Right” soundstage. Left the milk out on the counter? $2.79. Ran the whole dishwasher to clean one plate? $1.50 It’s not that I want to see the world this way—it’s that I can’t not see it that way anymore.

While they just can’t.

I’d like to think that in the future, when they are the ones paying for things, I’ll be as forgiving as my own mother, and just let bygones be bygones. And I will—to a degree. For instance, when one day I have the opportunity to take a shower in their houses, I’ll try not to be too wasteful. In fact, I plan on bringing my own cereal. And the biggest bowl I own.

Well, here it is: once again, summer vacation is almost upon us. How do I know this? I don’t know: maybe it’s because every other school day involves some sort of a field trip, concert or class party. Or maybe it’s because on those rare days when my kids actually have to do some kind of schoolwork they complain about it like French civil servants who have just been told they’re losing one of their seventy-three paid holidays. Or maybe it’s simply because everywhere I go I see ads for “summer day camps.” Everyone has their banners up: gyms, daycares, schools, churches—I’m surprised that bars and restaurants aren’t getting into the game as well and advertising some day camps of their own. (Actually, I think they are; it’s just that they put their ads in the help wanted sections, under “dishwasher needed.”)

And then, of course, there’s always the sleep-away camps: hockey camp, soccer camp, band camp, chess camp, fat camp (er, I mean fit camp), bible camp—the list is endless. In fact, it’s almost enough to make me feel guilty that the only thing my kids are going to be doing all summer long is sitting around the house, playing video games, watching inappropriate cartoons on Netflix instant queue, and eating their own weight in Fruity Pebbles.

Almost.

The one thing that’s stopping me from feeling guilty is the fact that that was the exact same way my sister and I used to spend our summers, and we turned out okay. Mostly. Okay, sure: our summers weren’t exactly the same. The only video game we had was “Pong,” and instead of Netflix instant queue we had a choice of four channels filled with daytime shows like “Oil Painting For Beginners,” “Sit and Be Fit,” and “Pets on Parade” And, yeah, my mom wouldn’t buy us Fruity Pebbles, so we had to make our own by dumping unsweetened Kool-Aid and a cup of sugar on top of a bowl of generic rice crispies. (We also made our own Oreo filling by mixing together crisco and sugar. Yum-O!) But still, even with the homemade junk food and semi-educational TV, we turned out okay.

Mostly.

The thing is, the only time I do remember going to a day camp was the one summer I whined too much about not having anything to do, and in retaliation my mom sent me to a day camp run by the school district. What this meant was that everyday I had to go back to the very same school I had just escaped from, and then spend all day long doing the same “fun” outdoor activities I had worked so hard to avoid in gym class. Things like archery, and kickball, and lanyard weaving. (Yeah, I know that making lanyard keychains isn’t really an “outdoor” activity—unfortunately, the people running the camp didn’t. Or maybe it was just that everything at this camp was an “outdoor activity”—only the counselors were allowed to go inside the buildings. Which was awful, because every time they came back out they would be holding some sort of icy cold drink, which us “campers”—limited to one small dixie cup of warm water every hour—would stare at with unrequited longing. Did I mention that this camp was in Phoenix? In July?)

It was torture. It was hell. But I guess, in the end, it was educational, because I learned the most valuable lesson a child can learn. And one that, it seems, my children have managed to learn as well (perhaps by osmosis), which must be why they have never once complained about their own summer arrangements.

The lesson? That no matter what, never, ever, tell your mother that you’re bored. Trust me; your future as a lanyard artist may depend on it.

Did you ever have one of those days when the first thing you thought when you walked into your house is, “Time to look for an exorcist”? Me, too. For me, it was all because of a smell. It wasn’t a terrible smell, exactly; in fact, in smaller concentrations, the smell might almost have been categorized as pleasant. The problem with this smell, however, was neither its type or its strength; no, the frightening thing about this smell was that it had no visible source, and, as everyone knows, unexplained smells are one of the first signs of a poltergeist.

Of course, I knew that it had been bound to happen sooner or later—after all, I do live in a house with one teenager of my own, as well as several rentals, and, as everyone also knows, teenagers are the number one cause of poltergeists. Still—I had hoped that the visitations would at least wait until my daughter, Clementine, was in her later teens. Apparently, though, this was not to be—and so, wanting to know the full extent of what I was in for, I turned to that most unimpeachable of sources: the internet.

Just as I had suspected, the mysterious odor was an early sign of possession. “Stage One,” my source said, consists of unexplained smells (check), strange noises in the middle of the night (very much check), and mysterious cold spots in certain rooms. I was sure on everything except that last one, until I remembered that Clementine’s room had been absolutely freezing all winter long—she had complained about it incessantly. True, she kept leaving her window open, but still. I read further.

“In Stage Two the strange noises become whispers and giggles” Hmm. Actually, the strange noises always were whispers and giggles. It went on to say that strange writing would begin to appear on doors and walls. Yikes—maybe Clementine really didn’t scratch that anarchy symbol into her bedroom wall after all.

“In Stage Three, electrical appliances will turn on and off on their own.” Well, I thought, that certainly explains the blackened piece of bread in the toaster oven that no one would admit to putting there. It also explains how no matter what time of day or night I come into the house, every single light is on and the electric meter outside is spinning like a top.

I read on, horrified at how far along this possession had already progressed. “Stage Four consists of scary voices shouting out obscenities and ordering the living to leave.” OMG: that was exactly what had happened to me the last time I walked into Clementine’s room without knocking first. The site went on to add that stage four is when household objects start to become “mysteriously” broken—just like my favorite teapot that I had found broken in Clementine’s room during that same visit; the one she denied ever touching!.

My dread growing by the minute, I looked up the final stage. “Stage Five,” it said, “is marked by the poltergeist attacking the residents of the house, and may include biting, scratching and kicking.” I began to think of the marks I saw on Clyde after he had burst into Clementine’s room without knocking, and had just about resigned myself to the prospect of finding an exorcist immediately when the bathroom door opened and the same powerful smell that had first alerted me to the presence of a poltergeist hit me full in the face.

Heart in my throat, I looked up just in time to see . . . to see . . .

A teenage boy holding an industrial-sized can of Axe Body Spray; suddenly all of the other “symptoms” started to make sense: I just had a bad case of “teenagers.” Still—it probably wouldn’t hurt to call an exorcist—just in case.