- 11/18/2009 1:07:32 PMIt seemed like a good ideaPerhaps I've mentioned in previous posts that Michael has a problem cleaning himself after he uses the bathroom (front and back). Specifically, he doesn't like to wipe his butt and when he chooses to do so, he doesn't do a very good job.
There are both natural and unnatural consequences to this sort of behavior. Some natural consequences might be a red itchy butt that doesn't seem to go away or underwear that is loaded with either brown stripes or smears of ... yuck. An unnatural consequence occurs with things like Mom refusing to wash such underwear and the offender being left to manage this responsibility by themselves. I suppose you could argue that this too is an "natural" consequence but no matter how you look at it, this is what has happened at our house.
For the past several months, one of Michael's daily chores is to hand wash his own underwear and hang them to dry on a small clothes line in his room conveniently located next to his bed. Periodically, Mom will check to see that this chore is being done.
Now, Michael is perhaps one of the laziest people in the world and he is always looking for a short-cut when it comes to tasks that he doesn't like. What he always fails to realize is that his kind of short cut seldom works out for the best.
For example, Michael doesn't like to brush his teeth. His idea of a short cut is to not brush them. In fact, he will go to extensive lengths to create the illusion that brushing is going on - even to the point of having the illusion be more time consuming and more involved than performing the actual task of brushing.
In his mind, "wanting" good teeth is just like "having" good teeth. There is a minor conflict in the fact that healthy teeth are generally white and stay in your mouth and unhealthy ones can come in a variety of colors such as black, brown, red, and green and they rot out. Michael ignores such discrepancies as an "unexplainable anomaly". Case closed. Then there is this other issue of not having any teeth with which to chew your food. Another unexplainable anomaly that is unrelated to brushing.
In the case of itchy butts, dirty underwear, and time wasting laundry - the short-cut solution was simple. Take the dirty underwear downstairs and go into the bathroom and pretend to wash them. Sometimes the illusion might even go so far as to turn the water on just in case anyone is listening or maybe even to get the underwear wet. Then put the still dirty underwear on the clothes line in the bedroom so as to give the illusion of spring fresh laundry hanging on warm sunny day. The final step in the process is to place the still dirty underwear back into the dresser drawer along side the few remaining clean underwear. Surely no one would notice the lingering stench of crack.
It was not long before the itchy butt thing mysteriously returned and mom checked over the results of Michael's laundry task.
You know, in most people's minds - when you put two and two together, you get four. In fact, Michael himself is able to do this equation and he "seems" to know that nothing good ever seems to come out of his shenanigans, but yet he does them anyway hoping for the one chance in a million that he will "get away with" something. I just don't get it.
So, last night while we ate dinner and watched a movie, Michael enjoyed the pleasure of washing every single pair of underwear he owns. We kept a bucket containing the dirty underwear in by us while he scrubbed one pair in the bathroom. We used a timer set that was set to four minutes. When the timer went off, he could rinse out the clean underwear and come and exchange it for a dirty pair. It took him about 2.5 hours to get through all of his underwear.
Periodically I would go into the bathroom and check on his progress. It was obvious that he was unhappy. He looked at me and said, "I don't like this. I should have wiped my butt".
"Why didn't you?", I asked.
"Because I didn't want to", he replied.
"Do you like washing all of your underwear by hand?", I asked.
"No.", he answered.
"Are you going to start wiping your butt?", I asked.
"Yes." he said
"Are you telling me that the war about this is over?", I asked.
"I want it to be over", he replied.
*** Recall what I said about Michael's views of "wanting" verses "having" ***
I have serious doubts as to whether this issue has come to a final conclusion. It has been an on and off battle in our home for 21 months.
T W E N T Y - O N E M O N T H S
T H A T ' S A L M O S T T W O Y E A R S ! ! !
How can someone be so close to the answer and yet resist it so much?
In other news, we have temporarily taken over the responsibility of brushing Michael's teeth for him. His gums have stopped bleeding and are now pink and healthy looking. His breath is better too. We are hoping to turn this responsibility back over to him very soon (again). When I say "again", I mean that I thought the "war" on that issue was over too. We'll see.
