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SALT LAKE CITY — This year I have purchased five coats, a letterman's jacket and three hoodies for my youngest two children. Using the math I was promised by my parents would someday be necessary, that is 4.5 per child.
This is the third and last time I may ever use math. My point is that taking a math class was stupid. But the point of that other thing I started out with is this: Where does all this outerwear go?
I can see leaving one at a basketball game or in a locker room. I can even see a hoodie or two disappearing due to taste differences between my kids and me. I have tastel; they prefer duct tape.
What do so-called "likes" and "dislikes" have to do with coat wearing? To use words my kids can understand, "The snot in your nose is freezing and turning to goober-flakes! Wear a blasted coat!"
In a weakening of my hard-nosed parental resolve, I broke down and asked them, communication being the go-to of the desperate, “Where is that lovely hounds-tooth jacket I just bought you with the money I should have, in retrospect, spent on sending you to a boarding school in Ottawa?”
Explanation No. 1: I left it at school.
Sorry. Can't happen. I got a good gander at their lockers when I attended “Berate Your Kid Night" at parent-teacher conference last month. It is the size of my old Brady Bunch lunchbox and is just as accessible. They couldn't fit a coat, books and a spray of Lysol in it at the same time.
I am, of course, assuming that their public schooling still includes books, for in my years as Prodigal Dad, I have seen nary a one at home.
I did find a copy of “Christian Vampires of the Northwest” once in my son's book bag, but he fell all over himself explaining that he was just keeping it for an unnamed friend who got in trouble with his parents for reading, or who was homeless, or some excuse I really didn't pay attention to because I was so proud he knew what a book was!
I then encouraged the behavior by using some expert reverse psychology:
"You go to your room for a month young man!" I yelled, convincingly. "I won't have that reading stuff in my house! We are an Xbox-playing, plaid-wearing, rifle-and-slingshot toting, big-hair kinda family, and no son of mine is gonna screw it up by reading! You listening to me, BOY!"
Other than that golden moment, books are as rare as the aforementioned spray of Lysol.
"Because we never have homework," they say. Or "Because we did it at school," they say.
Or because their teacher doesn't like them and gave everybody in the sixth grade a handout outlining her academic expectations except my poor, poor child. Add drama points for tears.
Or, lastly, "I can't see the blackboard because you make me get ready for school too fast and I forget the glasses that I have to wear because of your recessive genes."
That one hurt.
Explanation No. 2: I lost it at church.
OK, this is sort of feasible. Those church-going folk will save a penny wherever they can. But I would have seen said outerwear on a munchkin running around the neighborhood. And believe me, I have been keeping an eye out.
Explanation No. 3: It's dirty.
Sorry, doesn't fly with me. Have you seen/smelled the things these kids are wearing? It doesn't matter if it's been in the laundry pile for weeks under socks stiffer than my oatmeal, if Annie wants to wear the pink fur-lined “I'm a Brat” T-shirt, then “I'm a Brat” it is — regardless of smell or wrinkles.
Explanation No. 4:I have been working on my rock-hard pecs and I need to show them off.
This may be the only legit reason of the bunch. Possibly, his pecs are frozen solid.
Final explanation: I gave it to a street urchin who didn't have a coat.
OK, this makes me tear up a little, just like the “mother needs Christmas shoes” song. To think that my child would give up something treasured of his or hers, that they would actually go cold rather than have some poor thing go without the Hawaiian luau-themed parachute jacket I picked out for them myself!
This trumps all. God bless my sweet children!
Unless they're lying, and then I am going to kill them — a slow and painful death, like boarding school in Moose'n Mouse Pass, Canada (a quiet place where in their spare time they can peruse online for arctic outerwear).
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Main photo: My boy is the one wearing someone else's coat. (Photo: http://www.cai.org/sunday-school/teens)
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*Davison Cheney writes "The Prodigal Dad" series every week on ksl.com. See his other musings at davisoncheneymegadad.blogspot.com.**
