Mess for Success

Back in the day, during finals exams, the boys would grow unsightly beards and the girls would deck themselves out in baggy sweats and greasy hair. Looking and feeling unseemly somehow became an apt accompaniment to the misery of coming down the academic year's home stretch.

Like almost everything, finals time slovenliness has evolved into something ever bigger, ever more hideous. It's no longer just about personal hygiene. My house has become a veritable garbage receptacle for note cards, study guides, crumpled bits of paper, and, my personal favorite, plates speckled with petrified crumbs that seem to have been superglued on. I find them everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except for the sink (which would be lovely), or the dishwasher (which would be orgasmic).

My daughter is as diligent as anyone can be about creating a finals week dust cloud, which I know, from my own personal experience, correlates very little with the amount of effort she is actually putting into studying. At least I know she has the capacity to work hard on an impressive mess. And, as an extra bonus, her newly acquired driver's license has provided her with countless ways to make herself useful and contribute to household chores during the "breaks" from studying. Let's face it, nobody can spend an entire day just tossing school supplies and garbage about and gluing food particles to porcelain.

As a prime beneficiary of her new pastime (running errands), I must say I've become even more lenient than usual about her academic habits. "Do you need anything, mom?" she asks repeatedly, each time she conjures up a new urgent matter that requires her to grab her car keys. I've gotten over thinking it's a trick question, and I'm actually kind of enjoying the service. We no longer have to use scattered fast food napkins as paper towels, or toilet paper to blow our noses. We are well stocked. And I don't care how deeply I am sleeping; when my daughter -- who up until ten days ago would be hard pressed to venture downstairs to get something for me -- delivers frozen yogurt to me in bed, I can prop those eyelids open just long enough to suck it down. I have learned, the hard way sometimes, to not take anything for granted.

I am not even all that concerned about my new found obsolescence anymore.  Not as worried as my daughter is, apparently. Keep your retail job, she tells me. It's good for you to have something to do. Something to do? I have plenty to do. My youngest child may be driving, and finals week (with all its detritus) may be winding down, but I still have a blind dog who reminds me constantly that I do, indeed, serve a purpose. A dog who cannot remember where the walls are in the house he's lived in all his life, who cannot see (or even sniff out) an actual dog treat when I hold it under his nose, but a dog who can somehow detect a one pound box of chocolate Frango mints, still wrapped in cellophane, still inside a shopping bag, sitting up on a desk which should, by all rights, be out of his reach, and somehow get to it, open it up, and devour the entire thing.

Well thank goodness. For most dogs, such a chocolate binge could be life threatening, but Manny's girth allows him to withstand the poison. From the moment I saw the telltale dark green box top on the floor and the empty little candy papers neatly lined up on the couch, I knew it was going to be a long night of service. Let's just say you have not seen a chocolate mess until it has passed through to the other end of Manny and onto your wood floors. Sometimes, when God closes a door, he opens a window. My hours taking the retail world by storm may have been cancelled at the last minute yesterday afternoon, but, as always, my services were required somewhere, by someone. I have more than enough to do, thank you very much.

My daughter, the driver, played a major role in the whole Frango affair. She's the one who went out to buy them in the first place -- a "Chicago" gift for the French family with whom she will be staying for the next two weeks. Upon seeing the empty candy papers, she immediately -- without any prodding -- grabbed her car keys to venture out and replace the Frangos. After all, she was exhausted from studying, and this would be a well earned break.

Somehow, though, she was not around for the aftermath, the cleanups in aisle five. And six. And seven. She must have been greasing up her hair and tossing bits of paper around in her room. Lots of studying to be done.