Thank you, thank you, thank you.
It’s not what pre-teens and teens want to hear, but the beginning of school is just over a week away.
I love my grandchildren immensely, but it’s time for them to go back to learning inside a classroom. It has been a long two months of coming home to a destroyed house of toys being left right where they were played with for all of five minutes.
The bad part, especially for me, is my feet can locate every thumbnail-sized plastic toy item on the floor in the dark. The grandkids leave while it’s still daylight and miss them or just ignore them when told to pick up the toys.
There’s no shame in their game exercising their right to blaming of someone else for leaving the mess.
Then there’s all the plastic wrappers that once held ice pops laying everywhere inside and outside the house, empty bags of chips, cups ... you get the picture.
It’s almost like the trash can has become optional or maybe its just something to look at. It could also be the swinging flap doesn’t swing for them.
Family-sized chips are left open going stale while loafs of bread are drying out. Have you ever noticed the biggest spoons are used to collect mayonnaise for a cold cut sandwich or for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
The spoon is also left on the countertop instead being rinsed off and put in the sink. I have found it hard sometimes to lift or pry an eating untensile from the countertop.
Sometimes it takes something sharp to cut a slit through the goo so I can put the utensile in the sink under hot water.
Solo cups are usually left right where they were placed while eating a sandwich in the living room along with remnants of a sandwich. If it’s not a Solo cup, it’s the biggest glass container in the cabinet.
And, grandchildren never use the same cup/glass. Every trip to the kitchen to get something to drink ends with a fresh container.
Bath towels are used a lot at my house. First, they race to the pool and ask for a towel when they get out.
Then, they never hang one over the lounge chair to dry when exiting the pool. It’s a fresh towel for every other dip because they sneak in the house to get another one.
At the end of the day, it’s to gather towels from around the pool or from the floor of the screened in back porch where they just drop them.
Same with their clothes. Where they pull them off to don a swim suit is where they lay — in the middle of the bathroom floor.
It’s been a nice summer, but thankfully it is nearing an end. No more having all day to destroy the house ... just a couple of hours after school.
Kids are going to be kids with no care in the world.
Thank you, thank you, thank you the school bells are getting ready to start ringing.
• Rick Head is the Publisher and Editor of The Brantley Beacon and the Waycross Journal- Herald. He can be reached at beacon@btconline. net.
