Like most teenage boys, my wonderful son finds cleaning his room lacking awesomeness, so he chooses not to do it. They do not want to do anything unless it has even a small amount of awesomeness. I can try to convince his of the awesomeness that occurs to his brain when his eyes gaze opon the appearance of a clean room, but he will have nothing of it. It does not compute. I should be satisfied with that, and just close his door and turn away. But NOOOOO -- this mom cannot do that. The thought that maybe there could be a piece of cheese in the corner that these GIGANTAUR Texas cockroaches could dine on just gives me the heebies.
Well, it happened. One day I was fed up. The wonderful child had been asked several times to clean his room with the threat that he would not be able to attend a much anticipated party. He went to the party, however, out of default because I failed to check his bedroom and had not followed up. Failure of the number one rule of training children.
The next morning, however, the room was still not cleaned, and my wonderful son got up and commenced to play video games. Mind you, he had committed to let the neighbor's dog outside to go pee in the morning while they were out of town. It was close to 10:00 in the morning. I very STRONGLY suggested that he get his bee-hunker over to the neighbors house and let that dog out. While he was gone, I took his video game controllers and marched upstairs. On the way up, I grabbed some 30 gallon garbage bags. I was on a mission.
I started filling the bags with every thing that was not connected to the wall. The bedding itself filled two of those bags. In the process, my wonderful son shows up and asks, "What are you doing, mom?" (quite sheepishly, I might add). I said, "I am cleaning your room, and you can pay me for it." He said, incredulously, "How much?!" and I said, really without even realizing what I was saying, "$10 per bag!" He then started to help me pick up and I calmly said, "You can leave now....I will do this."
When I was finished, I had myself a fine collection of large garbage bags. I suggested to my wonderful son that he buy back his bedding first, which he very begrudgingly did. He had to clean out each bag before being able to buy back the next one. To him, this was the biggest FAIL he could imagine. His beloved iPod was at the bottom of one of those bags -- I just didn't know which one. He'd have to find that out for himself.
Fifty dollars poorer (of hard-earned money he was saving for a fancy camera), my wonderful son had his bags emptied, his bed made and his room cleaned. And now, whenever I feel that the room is lacking in awesomeness, I ask him, "Would you like me to clean your room for you, son?" For some reason, I never have had to again.
CHICKY GROOVY COOLNESS GADGET
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