Parents everywhere are leading parallel lives on this front. How many “searches” for lost things have we all endured with our littles?
Here is how my children look for something they’ve lost:
“MOM! Where’s my (shin guards, X Men comic, Messi jersey, homework folder, library book, drumsticks, etc.)”
Here is how I respond:
“I don’t know. Have you looked?”
“I looked everywhere!”
Allow me to translate. “Looking everywhere” in boyspeak means standing in their rooms with their eyes open, followed by basketball dribbling. No “looking” actually occurs.
Any memory prompting, such as “where did you see it last?” is as useful as teaching cats to breakdance, so I end up performing a hostile search and rescue for the lost item.
I mutter, I stomp, I open closet doors and dresser drawers using much more force than required, and I empty the hamper because usually those shin guards are inside a pair of soccer socks my youngest son, Ezra, took off last week. I have accidentally washed those shin guards more times than I care to admit.
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Jennifer Raphael is writer of as-yet-unpublished fiction, a freelance marketing writer and a blogging balabusta for the Jewish Exponent. Jennifer started her career in journalism, writing for TV news and a suburban newspaper before joining the staff at Philadelphia Magazine. As a freelancer, she has written articles for Glamour, Mademoiselle, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Men’s Health, to name a few. You can see more of her work on her website: www.jenniferraphael.com, and join her intimate band of Twitter followers @jenniferaphael. Her weekly parenting blog, Mother Words, can be found at http://www.jewishexponent.com/mother-words. She describes her parenting style as Method.