And Zen What

The one that goes, "Clean up! Clean up! / Everybody everwhere! / Clean up! / Clean up! / Everybody do your share!"

There are all these happy adorable moppets with a spring in their steps and a smile plastered on their faces chirping this song--on Barney and in my head.

It must be me, I keep thinking, as I escalate from bribes to taking away privileges to plain ol' fashioned yelling (hey--my mom did it and we are all happy productive members of this body politic, so I don't want to hear it, I really don't). They act like I'm asking them to take their seats in the belly of a slave ship.

"Whining"? Hah. That doesn't begin to cover it. Weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth in epic proportions. Tattling on the other ones who allegedly "aren't doing anything at all, Mom! I hafta do it all. I'm serious!" Howling to the heavens, "I didn't do it!" "Three put that there!!!" "That's not mine!!!!!"

Here's the kicker: it's their stuff! This is not even the part where I loll around on my chaise longue and have them scrub the floor and peel me grapes. (That part does happen, right? Right?)

And really. It does take about 15 minutes, tops, once they get started. It just takes about 2 hours to get them started. And I'm running out of creative threats.

I've read the books, the articles, the advice columns. They are all written by people without kids. Or maybe with one perfect one who runs on solar batteries.

Stickers? Nonstarter. Bribes? They don't care. Threats? Ditto. Removal of privileges? Hah!

It really is a battle between Good and Evil, in their little minds, when clean-up time arrives. They are committed. They don't care what is to gain, what is to lose.

There's a principle at stake, an irrational, inexpungeable, die-in-a-ditch principle. If you could somehow combine and harness the power of the "Not me!" which, in kidspeak, is a denial of all responsibility for whatever misdeed is under discussion, and the "Not me!" which is a refusal to willingly perform any household or bodily maintenance chore no matter how light or short in duration, I swear this planet would never need a drop of fossil fuel ever again.

Now, who's going to clean up this mess?

Not me!