Kicking Trashy People To The Curb

taking out the trash
Today is Thursday, my son's least favorite day of the week, because he is the king of the trash in our house.  It falls upon his shoulders to monitor the level of trash, and remove it when necessary.  It is his duty, on Thursday mornings, to wheel the big green plastic bin out to the curb.  It's a race against time, and the county truck.  Unfortunately, it's a race he comes dangerously close to losing week after week, because he can't seem to distinguish a Thursday from a Tuesday from a Saturday.  I would like to believe that summer vacation is the culprit.  Without a school schedule to follow, the days of the week do seem to resemble each other.  However, even back when he had to be up by six, because he had to be somewhere, he still had to be reminded to take out the trash.  

Now that the summer days are winding down, the supply lists are being written, the open houses and tours are being scheduled, the wardrobes are being scrutinized... it means little to him, because he's not going back.  He's done his time, twelve years of hard labor (thirteen actually), and two months ago, the committee decided to release him on his own recognizance.  No, he's not a parolee, he's a high school graduate.  His days of homework may be gone with the wind, but for as long as he lives in Mama's Boarding House, he'll be standing downwind of that big green plastic bin.

Oddly enough, another duty has presented itself, for me.  On this, very literal, trash day, I will be taking out a very different kind of trash.  I will be sitting my Punkin down, and sorting through her friend's list.  Not the cyber kind, because she has yet to be allowed on Facebook, (mostly because we suspect that she's being logging on anyway, secretly, and without permission).  No, today I am going to crumble up and throw away the assortment of spoiled people that have been stinking up her life throughout the summer.  They're standing in their stagnant lives collecting flies, and misdemeanors, for so long that I suppose their parents have developed a case of nasal fatigue.  (That's when you smell the same thing for so long that the brain no longer responds to it and shuts down the receptors).  Well, Hubsy and I have recently picked up their scent, and it's nauseating.  Punkin thinks they smell like adventure, freedom, and the excitement of drama.  What they really reek of is trouble.  Let me explain:

1)  Our house was recently egged by a seventeen year old boy, that Punkin crushes on.  He is intrigued by her  infatuation, even though he has a 16 year old girlfriend, with whom he is sexually active.

2)  One boy has recently returned to the group after a mysterious absence.  Turns out that he had been in Juvenile Detention for not only using, but selling, marijuana and crashing his parents car into their house!

3)  Another boy of 14, has an uncle, of 16, who hangs around his house, and talks openly about his continued drug use, even though he's on probation.  Rumor has it that his probation officer recently caught him in the act, and hauled him off.

4)  Last night, Hubsy and I received numerous prank phone calls, from an obvious young girl, pretending to be a guy, delivering love messages to our Punkin, who was not home at the time.  (she was spending the night with a friend, who had already been mother tested-father approved).  The prankster had no respect, no fear, and no qualms about making sexually explicit statements to my husband, about our Punkin.

I guess I'll have to admit that some of the family rules have loosened up over the summer break.  It's not something that I intended, but something that seems to have happened so gradually that I hadn't really noticed.  But these recent incidents, and the fact that school starts again in a mere three weeks, have gotten my attention.  It's time to tighten things back up, and cut off the loose ends.  I'm not racing against the county truck, but I am racing against time.  There's precious little of it left to get Punkin back on the right track, before a different sort of county vehicle comes to haul her away!