Growing up

Our beloved firstborn daughter posts on her blog here all about being a grown up, and the perils of procrastination. Her youngest brother is having a bit of a hard time showing some adult behaviour too. His bedroom is that of a typical teenager. There are clothes all over the floor, the detritus of food and drink consumed in the room all gathered in a pile,school work, bits of university application, you name it, it is probably in there somewhere.

Last evening, I named several things that I thought were in there. Items which included the Bourne DVDs, my copy of series 2 of the West Wing. "They're not in here" was the stout reply to my enquiry. I then managed a sneak look in on the pretext of gathering up the waste which had to go out for the dustman last night. It looked has though the dustman had called early, but delivered instead of collected. Youngest son then went out to a pub quiz. I spent 20 minutes in his bedroom, and found one of the Bourne DVDs, 4 of the 6 West Wing DVDs, together with their containers, a portable DVD player, one half of my Forty Licks Rolling Stones CD set, and my voice recorder. At this point I had to leave for fear that I would explode with rage.

I spent a restless night working out a plan to tackle this behaviour. He is such a nice young man. He does so much that makes me proud and pleased. I am just not prepared to lose my precious stuff to his bedroom, and he needs to understand that. The first part of the plan was executed this morning, the second half will follow his return from school. Wish me luck.