Help! I’m Living With Criminals

Help! If you’re reading this, please send help. I’m trapped. I’ve locked myself in the master bathroom, but that’s not the problem. The problem is lurking just outside the bathroom door, waiting for me to come out so that they can terrorize me some more. Armed with a relentlessness that would have made Al Capone proud, they refuse to budge until I meet all of their demands. They are…my children.

I’ve escaped to the bathroom for sanctuary, like so many father’s before me, and for sixty blissful seconds all was quiet. Then the boy figured out where I was and came knocking. Maybe if I stay quiet he’ll think the bathroom magically locked itself on its own. “Come on Dad, I know you’re in there.” Shit! Ok just stay quiet. Let’s see if he gives up. More knocking. “Dad, I want to take a shower.” The sheer audacity of this request has my mind doing somersaults, making it impossible for me not to talk. That’s the genius of unreasonable demands. I remind him that he has his own bathroom and that my shower is for ME. That’s why I call it, MY SHOWER.

He lingers outside the door, mulling this over. “But I don’t like my shower,” he says. Another moment passes and before I can suggest the outdoor hose as an alternative, I hear him shuffle out of my bedroom mumbling “okay,” and if I’m not mistaken, “I’ll wait.” Relentless. When did “no” become such a difficult concept for American children to understand?

Looking around the bathroom, I decide to do an inventory check. My oldest daughter has a penchant for stealing my nail clippers and my wife’s shampoo. She also steals our clothes. You heard me. Not just my wife’s clothes, but mine as well. I used to find this adorable. When she first appeared wearing my Boston College sweatshirt one day, I took it as the ultimate compliment. The kid and I are really bonding. A few days later I saw her best friend wearing a BC sweatshirt and thought my coolness was really trending until – wait a second, is that my sweatshirt? What’s going on here, are you running a thrift shop out of your bedroom?

But my daughter isn’t the only one hijacking my closet; my oldest son takes all of my socks. He doesn’t even like wearing socks, but that doesn’t stop him from taking all of mine. And when he does wear them, he walks around outside without any shoes on. Twenty-four hours later my socks are returned to me with scruff marks and holes in them, totally ruined.

This sock thing is a big deal to me. The first time I remember feeling like I could relate to Tom Brady was when he said that all he wants out of life is new socks. I’m with you Tommy. New socks are a sacred thing. At this point, just socks I could call my own would make me so happy I would cry. While my son shuffles around in all of my regular socks, my wife distributes my good hiking socks to the kids for ski-season. I don’t know what toxic acid is leaching out of our kids’ feet, but within a few days those are all ruined too.

Oh well, who cares right? They’re just Dad’s socks. And literally the only thing I’ve asked everyone not to touch. It’s like my socks are subject to some sort of lend-lease program where I’ll supposedly get paid back after the war is over. We all know how that works out.

Socks and sweatshirts are just the tip of the iceberg, however, as my housemates’ thievery knows no bounds…

1. They steal my phone charger all the time because 80% battery life just isn’t enough, and God forbid they don’t have a charger in every room in order to deal with such a terrible emergency. Dad? He doesn’t need a charger, no. What does Dad need to do with his phone anyway? Work? Pshaw! What’s that?
2. Speaking of work, they steal all my blue pens. I’ve bought boxes and boxes of them but only have one blue pen left. I’m keeping track of this sucker more than my bank account. I have to. Every time I buy a new box and take one pen out, before I’ve even written down what I have to do next, the box is gone and I’m out 19 pens.
3. Sticking with the work-from-home theme, my youngest also steals my stapler for her art projects. Okay, that’s kind of cute – until I can’t find the stapler. She has also confiscated fifty-seven pairs of scissors, all of which have gone missing in some hidden vault that only she controls.
4. The children also steal all of the hot water by spending an inordinate amount of time in my shower. Then they steal all the towels from my bathroom, which evidently nobody taught them how to use, because puddles are everywhere like it’s a Boston sidewalk after a rainstorm. Of course I don’t realize any of this until I have stepped into the shower and the cold water lifts my fog. Soaking wet, towel-less and freezing, I have to scurry naked through the house to the linen closet, hoping to avoid any encounters with the little marauders.
5. My daughter also thinks all of the furniture my wife and I have bought is really hers. I’ve come home to find lamps on the floor because she thought the side table by the couch would look better in her bedroom. Weeks later that same side table will be sitting in the upstairs hallway; a sign that it did not live up to her expectations and that I have now been graciously granted permission to take it back to its original location.
6. None of these transgressions are as frustrating though as when they steal the remote. Because after committing said theft, they then hide it from each other because they don’t want anyone else in control of the TV. Then after forgetting where they put it, they ask me if I can find it for them.

I could go on and on, but right now I just want to get out of the bathroom. Quietly, carefully, I open the bathroom door to make sure the coast is clear. There’s no sign of the boy. It’s so quiet everywhere in the house, the kids must all be in there rooms. Seizing the moment for a little “me time,” I creep down to the kitchen and open the freezer, only to discover that the children have stolen all of the vanilla ice cream.

No matter. Empty-handed, I make my way over to the family room, looking forward to a little Netflix. But when I plop down on the couch, I can’t find the remote. Looking up at the ceiling, wondering why finding a little “me time” has to be so hard, I start to hear water running up above in the master bathroom. My bathroom. The boy must have been hiding around a corner somewhere and had waited me out after all. Son of a gun.