Smile! What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Stronger

The other day my son came to me at 11 o'clock to ask for help because he was missing his toothpaste.

Now I do not know what goes on in other people's households, but in mine, whenever someone cannot find something, they are quite certain that another child has deliberately STOLEN the item that is missing, or out of spite, simply moved it to a hidden location. It couldn't POSSIBLY be that the missing shoes/socks/uniform/lunchbox were discarded/abandoned in the car/underthebed/left at school/or dropped in the basement when they decided to have a tournament of Mario Wii.

My son, overtired, was seeking to establish a full scale rightous mad at the moment at the sibling of his choice. I summoned the will to go upstairs. In the drawers/medicine cabinet and bin, cumulatively, there were SEVEN...SEVEN varieties of toothpaste. There were two kids squeeze bottles, one cherry and one sparkle, one Cogate, one Crest, a Tartar, Whitner and a ProHealth --that's mine, and an Aquafresh with extra brightening power. It took longer to write the descriptions than to find them. I produced the bin filled with various methods of cleaning his pearly whites. "Well?" I asked.

"Yeah, but I was using the little one in your room."

It was a travel toothpaste that my husband and I have been sharing for two days because ours had...disappeared.

It is 11:15 pm. I've just found seven toothpastes including mine. I'm tired. Using my inside voice but with a touch of the color "I'm Mom and about this, I just don't care" in tone, I explain, "If you can't brush your teeth with one of these..." and I can't think of something to finish the sentence so I end, "there's something wrong with you! Now brush!"

Monday, two of my children attended a seminar on managing teen stress put on by a friend's daughter seeking a Girl Scout Gold badge. (The equivalent of an Eagle Scout rank).

When a woman giving one of the lectures on homeopathic living asked the crowd of mostly teenaged girls what was the number one cause of death amongst women as part of her opening remarks to emphasize why destressing was so important, my 12 year old son of the many tooth cleaners raised his hand.

"Um...Stress?" he asked meekly. She praised him for being so aware. I'm guessing he'd looked at the poster display she had before the thing started.

"And what causes stress for women?" she went on further.
My son raised his hand again.

"Children?"

For the record, I'm still ticking, but as for the leading cause of stress, it might be children but then again, it might be tooth decay...just saying.