I am the one female in our house. The one female with zero privacy. The zero privacy has not really been a big deal because I have the attitude that we all have bodies. I have the same parts as the next girl. I don’t want to be so private that my boys become “Peeping Toms” to figure out why girls shirts are lumpy.
I have a line though.
No one, not even my husband comes in while I am “shining my belly button.” I use the room where they all go number one and number two, but I am in there having private, quiet time. Girls don’t poop. They tinkle and our belly buttons require shining. This is all a very complicated lie because I don’t want my husband to think of me “releasing hostages,” as my boys call it.
When I had kids I began locking the door. It worked for a little while. When our older boys started crawling they would just sit up against the door and cry. When they got older they pounded on the door. Then when they could walk and talk and jimmy a door they would yell, “MooooooooMMMMMMMM!!!!!”
I would answer back, “I am in the powder room.”
They would then try and open it and I would say, “It is locked.”
And they would sweetly say, “Oh, I will get it.” and then they would pop the lock and come right in.
It has never occurred to them that I locked it to keep them out. It was always as if they were doing me a favor picking the lock so I wouldn’t have to get up and open it.
So I hid all of the shish kabob skewers!
Ha! I will show them.
If you come to my house and you notice a little rattle in the door knobs when you turn them, it’s just dried spaghetti noodles.
Peter is a resourceful boy and at 18 months old he could pop a lock in no time. When I took away the shish kabob skewers to give everyone some much needed….ehhhemmm…PRIVACY, he found the box of spaghetti noodles. They do not work well to open locked door.
He can’t open doors anymore (so I won), but our door handles are the big losers because they are filled with Peter’s foiled attempts at rudeness.
This leads me to several years later on a hot summers day and another…
“ONLY ABBIE HAS THESE EMBARRASSING THINGS HAPPEN TO HER STORIES”
It is mid morning and after doing my housework I announced I was going in to take a shower. I left the boys with their buddies in the driveway playing squirt gun wars.
I am all lathered up and facing the shower head with my eyes closed.
I turn around to rinse my hair and open my eyes to find…
all three of my boys and all of the neighbor boys standing there, in a line.
The door was locked! I know I locked it!
Remember, I do not lock it for them they think, despite years of explaining that mom needs private time. They just unlocked it while I had my back to the door.
We have a large shower with clear glass walls.
There is nowhere to hide.
“Can we have a Popsicle?”
They are all just looking at me.
“Out! Yes, and GET OUT!”
They all just turn around and walk out like, no biggie.
I am thinking I have to call their moms and tell them they saw me naked as a jay bird. I am thinking this is just a naked body. But it wasn’t…
I had to call the moms and tell them what their boys saw.
I knew I was going to have to explain that I watched a stupid Oprah show and got a Brazillian bikini wax to get ready for bathing suit season. As if having a Brazilian bikini wax wasn’t traumatizing enough!
Why? Why? Why is this always my timing with embarrassing moments? It couldn’t just be embarrassing enough for the neighborhood to see me full frontal naked I would also send an entire generation of boys into their teen years thinking their girlfriends are freaks because they have hair…”there.”
Abbie, All that makes you… allthatmakesyou.com
You may also like this story
All that makes you... 