Passing The Buck

My daughter has lost her passport.

"Where did you last see it?" we ask. "And when?"

"I don't know!" she wails. "I had it the other day. I saw it on my chest of drawers -- I know it was there!"

I feel like wailing myself: I've got a manuscript to rewrite. I ought to be doing that, not searching all over the house for a lost passport.

"So you keep it on your dresser? That's the only place?"

"Sometimes I keep it in my bag and sometimes I keep it on my dresser."

I happen to know that those aren't the only places she keeps it. Our daughter is smarter than my husband and me, but she's also as scatterbrained as they come. She goes through umbrellas and swimming suits like nobody's business. Last year she managed to lose her cell phone on a dolmuş, causing all sorts of inconvenience. But this is the first time she's lost her passport.

We turn the house upside down. Drawers, bags, pockets, shelves -- all are searched. Every time I look at the computer, I feel guilty. I ought to be writing...

"Not there, I've already looked there!" our daughter cries, seeing us rifle through drawers she has already been through. But the problem is we haven't been through the drawers.

"Just to be on the safe side!" I tell her, reminding her of my lost earrings. I bought the earrings three weeks ago, then promptly lost them. I went through everything in my bag, turned out my drawers, combed over the top of my dresser, but it was no use: the earrings were gone. Two days ago, I was amazed to find them on top of the dresser.

The earring story cuts no ice with my daughter, however. "I've looked everywhere! If it was here, I'd see it!"

We look everywhere. We don't see it.

My husband is not pleased. "Do you think you could have thrown it away?"

This isn't an impossibility. People in this family have been known to put important items into plastic bags when they go shopping. I've found money and credit cards in Tesco bags and once almost threw out a camera someone had left in a plain white plastic bag. Sometimes after the excitement of a shopping trip, the purchase is extracted from the bag which is then abandoned on the floor. Decluttering is something I now do automatically. I make no apologies for this: leave your receipts and Extremely Important Documents lying around on the kitchen counter and I am your worst enemy.

I go through my entire plastic bag collection, which is voluminous, making a few unpleasant finds (bread crusts in one bag, furry with mold; fish bones in another, the smell magically contained all this time) -- but no passport.

Every possible scenario is explored, but that passport is gone. Our daughter, in her anger and frustration, blames our kitten. "She could have done something to it! She's always playing with my stuff!"

I feel a little sorry for her. Up until last year, she had an older sister to blame. Now she's reduced to pointing her finger at the cat.

"The cat couldn't have hidden your passport," we tell her sternly.

"But sometimes she takes stuff of mine! I found my socks under the bed -- and my wallet!"

"Come on," we sigh. "Where could she possibly take your passport?"

The kitten is going through a bad patch right now: at a mere four months, she's already in heat and not happy about being confined indoors. Perhaps that is why she chooses to pee in my hat just as I have settled at the computer and begun to write.

There is no way I can write with a peed-on hat. That manuscript will just have to wait.

Yep, that cat has got a lot to answer for. Maybe she's the one who took my earrings.

Things My Teenagers Can Do That I Can't

In the interest of fairness, here are twenty things my teenagers can do that I cannot.

1) Spell U-Tube. I mean YouTube.

2) Figure out how to use any mobile phone. In, like, seconds.

3) Dance skillfully without unwittingly amusing spectators.

4) Turn heads when we go downtown (without falling down, spilling the contents of their purses, or otherwise making spectacles of themselves).

5) Sit down in the midst of Great Turmoil and Chaos with a perfectly clean conscience.

6) See a sink full of dishes without feeling oppressed and culpable, even when they generated most of the dishes.

7) Math.

8) Sit for hours looking at a computer screen. It is true that I sit for hours when I write, but when I am by myself and thus not in danger of having my internet access snatched away, I have to get up and walk around frequently. My kids can sit still almost entirely motionless for hours at a time -- I've seen them.

9) After sitting for hours on end, arise without moaning, "Oh, my poor back!"

10) Lie convincingly, most of the time.

11) Apply eye liner without smearing it.

12) Handstands (Eldest).

13) Go back for seconds, third, fourths and fifths and never gain as much as an ounce (Youngest).

14) Remember how to get to a place after only going there once (Acquired Daughter).

15) Watch Japanese and Korean soap operas without snorting in irritation at the stupidity of some of the plots and poor quality of some of the acting.

16) Use any floor as a clothes depository without the least bit of embarrassment.

17) Read the labels on packages without the aid of glasses.

18) Fall in love with items of clothing without looking at the price tag first.

19) Immediately tell the difference between CDs and DVDs without making the mistake of inserting them into the wrong piece of equipment first.

20) Go to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that someone else will lock the doors, check the windows, and turn off all the lights.

Now maybe they will forgive me for my last post...

Things I Can Do That My Teenagers Can't

What a big difference a few decades can make! Just the other day, I came up with this list -- inspired by my Youngest, who struggled to understand my ignorance of all things related to cellular phones -- and it filled me with such awe that I just had to share it. And why have a blog if you can't do things like this from time to time?

1) I can reach into a drain and pull stuff out of it. I don't just mean the odd bits, like a day's worth of stray noodles, scraps of vegetables and tea leaves, either; I'm talking about the gunk that accumulates after a whole month. Slime, hair, age-old crud, food that's been in there since Clinton was president.I can reach right in, pull it out, and -- after giving the involved hand a good wash -- still use it again. (Umm...the hand, that is.)

2) I can leave my house within minutes -- seconds even, if need be -- of getting out of bed.

3) Further to number 2 above, I can actually get ready to leave my house in a matter of minutes. I can pull on jeans and a sweat shirt, shove my feet into shoes, rake a comb through my hair, slap on some sunscreen -- and I'm good for the day.

4) I can take out the trash when it has old fish bones in it. Or rotting vegetables. Or fruit that has been left to go moldy. I can do this even when the bags are leaking.

5) Further to number 4 above, I can identify all the places where the bags have leaked, go back to them, and clean them up.

6) I can -- and do -- remember to make my bed every single morning, even when I have a headache.

7) I can go to work for an entire day, help with the shopping, come home, and cook an entire dinner for five, then wash up after it. (What I can't do is restrain myself from whining after this, but hey, I'm human.)

8) I can show someone how to do something, like how to read English or use past perfect correctly or distinguish between two different modals or remember the stroke order for a particularly difficult character, and not feel upset when they forget how to do it later and have to be shown all over again.

9) I can tell which items of clothing will, if washed with brand-new, snow-white items, turn them a different color.

10) I can feel whether a pot is clean just by running my hands over it. I can immediately spot the half inch of cooked-on oatmeal that has been left encrusted on the lip of the pot.

11) I can hear something unpleasant that has been said about me and refrain from denying it immediately and saying something bitchy about whoever said it.

12) Further to number 11 above, I can reflect about what was said about me and consider whether there is perhaps a grain of truth in it. Sometimes I can even be thankful for having heard it.

13) Upon walking into a room, I can spot -- within seconds -- the items that do not belong in it. I can see socks only just visible under sofas; coffee cups hidden in corners; prune pits left under papers on tables; empty bottles placed strategically for decorative effect.

14) I can get out of bed when I have a fever and headache and care for someone who is worse off than I am. I can cook with a bad back or a sore throat or stomach ache.

15) I can listen to an anecdote my husband has told fifteen times with every sign of enjoyment (admittedly because he is a good storyteller and his stories always change a tiny bit every time and I have to remind him that he has strayed off the path of truth). I can (usually) laugh at his terrible puns, time after time.

16) I can, albeit grudgingly, compliment someone on a job well done even when it was not done properly, as long as I know that it was done in good faith. (Sometimes I fail on this one, but I am only human.)

17) I can walk down the street, singing, and not feel the least bit embarrassed.

18) I can walk down the street without make-up on, my hair all ahoo, and not feel the least bit embarrassed.

19) I can be fifteen pounds heavier than I'd like to be, put on a bathing suit, then go outside and be gazed upon by complete strangers, and not drop dead from mortification.

20) I can look at my teenagers and see quite clearly the fine human beings I know they really are.

Any other parents of teenagers with lists they'd like to share?