How to be the World’s Worst Mum Step Thirteen: The Packed Lunch.

 

No one should ever look inside a Teenager’s school bag.

It is an unwritten law.

I have long understood that a school bag is an inner sanctum, a place that can only be opened by the initiated, that is if they are wearing goggles, a face mask and rubber gloves!

A Teenager’s school bag, that repository of never delivered letters to parents, which lie furled up beside forgotten homework and under scrunched up worksheets; where part of a sweaty PE kit lies festering, buried beneath grubby text books; and where new gases unknown to science are constantly being formed from this nebula of slow and pungent decay should never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, be unzipped within a home.

‘Oh,’ I say as I see The Teenager standing in the hallway as if waiting for Mum’s Taxi Service.

‘It’s all right. I’ll sweep it up,’ he says.

There’s something I’m missing.

Then I see.

The teenager is standing surrounded by bread crumbs and crusts as if manna from Heaven has just been delivered from the Heavenly take away service.

I raise my eyebrows ever so slightly as if about to ask a question. I’m puzzled as to why divine intervention has occurred on this particular Tuesday morning all over our hall carpet.

I know things are bleak but that bleak?

I sit mystified on the bottom step wondering if we are to expect visits from passing ducks soon who would want to share in our sudden bounty. I’m half listening for the sound of waddling feet and quacks.

The Teenager is standing in the middle of it all.

Later, I discover that a year’s worth of breadcrumbs have fallen from his school bag onto the floor.

I’m then to discover that it is, of course, all my fault.

‘It’s the plastic bags you use,’ he complains, ‘they don’t do up properly, then all the crusts fall out and end up at the bottom of my bag. Then over time they get scrunched down into crumbs.’

I think of the tough freezer bags with their natty little closing tops that I have sealed many times so easily, and in which I have sometimes even stored soups without any problems, and I ponder the Teenager’s words.

‘I see,’ I say, not seeing at all.

Teenagers aren’t very good at eating crusts, or in putting their leftovers in the bin when there’s a handy school bag to stuff them into.

In the absence of rapacious ducks he begins to sweep up the mess.

‘So it wasn’t a visitation by God then,’ I say somewhat relieved.

He doesn’t hear over the noise of the vacuum cleaner.

And as I go to make him his packed lunch for the day, I must admit to being somewhat disappointed that no ducks did appear.