Those Aren’t Mine!

My kidlets are all home again. Ahh….

The three oldest kids returned from Teen Pact National Convention full of stories punctuated with exclamation points (!!! ) and everything they took with them – minus the snacks.

We got a great feel for their week away when we looked through the pictures they took. One picture stood out to me – I’m still not sure why they took it – but it was kind of funny!

It is a picture of someone’s sleeping bag and bag of clothes. They unloaded it there on Monday afternoon and never picked it up.

Never.

All week the sleeping bag and bag of clothes sat there. All week it was announced that someone’s sleeping bag and clothes were sitting outside.

But they were never claimed.

Some boy had slept on a bare mattress all week and never changed his clothes. I jokingly said that all they needed to do was smell the kids about Wednesday and you would know who hadn’t changed their underwear. 🙂  But then I remembered that this was a bunch of junior and senior high boys – so that test wouldn’t be very accurate.

Seriously – I wondered how in the world someone would not miss their things?!

But then I remembered that these were junior and senior high boys.

Case in point: earlier this spring one of my sons suddenly lost all of his jeans. They were not in his dresser – they weren’t in his dad’s dresser or his brothers. They had simply vanished into thin air.

He went an entire week with alternating between his one pair of jeans and his pajama pants.

Finally – I went up to check the attic where all the kids have a Rubbermaid plastic tote for off-season clothes. Voila! There were several pairs of jeans in his tote – in his size.

I brought them down – but he looked at them and said. “Those aren’t mine – I’ve never seen them before.”

Hello! He wore those jeans all winter. I bought them for him. I washed them and folded them all winter long. Those were his jeans. He probably carried them up on a warm spring day – thinking he wouldn’t need them anymore and forgot about it.

I said, “Humor me – just try them on.”

Would you believe – they fit?!

I just smiled my “all-knowing mother smile” and proclaimed it a miracle.

Now I totally understand why some teenage boy never recognized his own sleeping bag and clothes. It’s called adolescence.

And I can totally understand his mom’s frustration when her son arrived home empty handed.

I send her my sympathies.

Techie Son Edit: I’m still sure those jeans weren’t mine.