Out with the Old

“That’s okay – we can just buy another one,” my five-year-old said about his older brother’s Christmas gift that he had just broken.

“Not so fast!” I said. “That was a very special gift from Santa! Who do you think is going to ‘just buy another one’?”

“Well…you are, Mommy.” He looked at me like I was stupid.

“I don’t think so!” I huffed.

I don’t know how much of this was his wishful thinking – I am sure he felt bad he had destroyed his brother’s PlayTV Baseball, and I wondered how ‘accidental’ it was: he sometimes morphed into the Tasmanian Devil when frustrated – and how much was a case of “I-have-too-much-and-nothing-is-sacred-itis,” also known as “affluenza.”

It was Christmas afternoon.

I vowed that before the week was up, I’d clean out the big boys’ room. It was something I should have done prior to the onslaught of all the Christmas gifts.

It became especially evident during that week between Christmas and New Year’s that there was just too much stuff in our snug house. The boys and all their accessories were all over the place, bouncing off the walls, furniture, and each other. Every time I walked through the living room, I had to shuffle my way through the pillows and blankets from the couches, toys, and games – many of them electronic – and often the boys themselves, who were literally underfoot as they wrestled and rolled around on the floor, juice cups, babas, and snack bowls teetering precariously amongst the overflow from the coffee and end tables.

Asking the boys to clean their room was futile, since all they did was shove stuff in drawers and on shelves or in the closet. If I cleaned it I could purge. I could get rid of all the McDonald’s toys and trinkets & trash that had accumulated from goody bags and moments of weakness (mine) when we passed vending machines in the supermarket or bowling alley. Gosh, hadn’t I just done that before Thanksgiving? I decided I needed to be a little less sentimental about their stuff.

This had been hard for me in the past because even though they didn’t use half it, there might be that once in a blue moon moment where one of them would recall something they once had, which was all of a sudden the most important thing in the world, their prized possession.

Like the Sponge Bob plug-n-play video game.

There was one time a year or so ago, that my oldest became obsessed with finding his Sponge Bob video game. Unfortunately for him, I had put in the recycle bin at Donelan’s months earlier when he became seriously involved with his Game Boy.

“I really want to play with that video game.” (Uh oh…)

“I’m sure we don’t have that anymore, honey.”

Pause.

“All I really want to do is play with that video game.”

“I don’t know where it is, honey.” (Technically true. I know where I put it, but have no idea where it went from there).

“The game in my Game Boy is too hard!”

“Do you want me to help you read the words?”

“No. I really want to play with that video game. I haven’t played it in a long time!” (Pitbull boy.)

“Last time you played it you got mad, remember?”

“I know it’s in the closet upstairs! Why can’t I just look!?” (Because this is where I stash their Easter eggs, extra birthday presents that I keep on hand, the special Christmas wrapping paper from Santa Claus…stuff I don’t want them to see).

“Okay. Fine, go ahead – I’m sure you won’t find it.” And I let him, knowing he wasn’t going to take my word for it, and hoping that the items I didn’t want him to see were suitably camouflaged. Fortunately, before he got too far into the “closet,” which is actually the eaves of the attic, he found a Nintendo 64 game we had inherited. This proved to be enough of a distraction to get us off the topic of Sponge Bob.

What a coward I was – but no longer! If the boys did, indeed, have a case of affluenza, it was nobody’s fault but mine. But how could that be? I thought about all the times we’d talked about wants versus needs. And about the periodic special collections we have at church. And I’d told them recently about the magazine article I’d read at the salon about homeless kids and what they wanted for Christmas – it was all stuff my boys took for granted. A bed. A house. A car. Friends. Hmmph! These kids just don’t know how good they have it!

Fueled by those thoughts, I tore through their room. I took all the action figures – Bible Man, Bat Man, Red Power Ranger (two of those), and assorted villains and sidekicks and put them and all their weapons and other trappings aside in a big zippered freezer bag – a veritable treasure trove for someone who would appreciate them. My boys hadn’t been playing with them and besides one of them got the Power Rangers Mystic Force Megazord from Santa, which is made up of five individual Power Rangers, so it’s not like their lives are devoid of action figures. I thinned out the Halloween costumes, removing the cracked masks and things too creepy to pass down to the youngest. Maybe he’d want to be – was that Wolverine? – when he turned five, but I’d worry about that when the time came. I sorted through multitudes of bouncy balls, el-cheapo yoyos, mini Frisbees, and other piñata-filler-quality plastic items. Sayonara. I liberated all the LEGO sets from their individual plastic baggies and tossed them into the bin (sans packaging or instructions) with the vintage LEGOs we’d bought at our neighbor’s yard sale. These were the good, old-fashioned LEGOs that can make anything you can imagine, not just specific vehicles, Bionicles or Exoforce robots. And I got rid of an entire race car set that we’d bought at a church fair and wasn’t even all there to begin with. I was ruthless. And when all was said and done, I’d put together eight or so bags to either throw out or put in the recycle bin.

And then I began my PR campaign.

“Look boys, Mommy cleaned your room – now you have space to play up here! Isn’t that great!?” (wink wink, nudge nudge)

“Boys, why don’t you go play with your new Hot Wheels set – in your room?”

“Boys, stop roughhousing in the living room! You can take that behavior outside or up to your room!”

It’s been a week, and they haven’t noticed anything’s missing. But when they do, I am sure I will find the strength to tell them why I did what I did. It’s the only cure I know for affluenza!

P.S. Regarding the PlayTV Baseball game, rather than just buy another one, we had this one fixed. Now I hear the boys playing with it much more reverently than before…in their room.