Huntress of the Lens

JUSTICE%20HOWARD%27s%20%22DIVA%20DOLLS%22Quantcast

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Mr. Nobody, a repost from somewhere else I write.


Mr. Nobody
I live in a house that is technically a two-bedroom, but two more rooms have been modified enough to call them someone's room, and one person who sleeps on the couch with designated areas of the living room for his stuff. Counting my husband and I, and our four offspring who are occupying all of this boarding space we have six people who live in our house. With the economic crash that began last year or even before, it's become a trend, this adult-children-living-at-home-again thing that we're doing, I know from talking to friends at both ends of the parental spectrum that we didn't invent this.

The six residents here do our best to get along and not step on each other, which is a challenge since there is no room you can go into that has not been named "someone's room." Except the bathroom, which is everyone's room, and we all take turns with it. There is actually another bathroom, attached to the back room, but for some reason that one is dedicated to spiders and empty toilet paper rolls, and to be quite honest simply smells like a boys' bathroom at a gas station. You would have to walk through and over one person's stuff to get to it, and the only time that kind of invasion makes sense is when you really have to pee and someone else is in the shower.

I'm totally cool with all six residents, it's the seventh that is driving me crazy. Mr. Nobody. Why I assign a male gender to this as-yet unseen seventh roommate is a mystery, but their behavior just seems male to me. Mr. Nobody is the one that leaves the lunch meat on the kitchen counter, leaves a whole loaf of bread open to become air toast, drinks half a glass or most of a glass of milk and leaves the remainder somewhere to become, eventually a home cottage cheese experiment, and doesn't agree that condiments belong in the refrigerator.

Mr. Nobody has all the silverware and most of the glasses in the magical land of somewhere else, because if you try to run the dishwasher and ask "So, who has forks in their room?" everyone will say that it's not them. This same invisible person will use the last of the milk, the toilet paper, the toothpaste and not report a need for more when Mrs. Grocery Shopper (that's me) is so obviously going to be making a trip to the store soon.

It's amazing and rude, what Nobody does around this house. Even if you can track ownership of a pair of shoes or a generic black hoodie sweatshirt to a certain person, they will assure you that even though it's theirs, they themselves did not leave it in common space. All space here is common space, except for the tiny area designated for each person's belongings. Nobody will move your load of wet washing from the washer to do their own laundry, without cycling it through the dryer for you first, or remove your clean, dry laundry to a surface and not bring it up from the basement.

He uses metal utensils in the non-stick pans. It's Nobody who will close the dishwasher, half full of dirty dishes to get to a cupboard to make something to eat, and then set their bowl on the counter right next to it or in the sink. It's Nobody who will put a dish with any kind of food still in it straight into the sink, even though in the thirteen years we've lived in this house we've never had a garbage disposal. Nobody will take the trash out to the can, which is just a statement, not saying that this mystery person actually does it, it's more saying that nobody will do it so my hard working husband has to do that AND take the cans out to the street on garbage day and bring them back that evening. It is, however Mr. Nobody who will carefully defy the laws of gravity stacking items on top of a full trash can until it towers over the actual borders of the kitchen can.

I love my kids, all of them. I am totally sick of this Mr. Nobody though, the invisible roommate who also lives in this house and does not contribute to rent, groceries or utilities. When I find him, I'm kicking him out. He's comfortable here though, he's been living with me since it was just me and my own three kids. Bastard.

1 comment:

  1. Wow - you are a writer! I 'once' related to living with Mr. Nobody - a young one approximately teen years. I can however, remember being closely similar to that as a teen and can't believe how my mom could stand to live with me!

    ReplyDelete

The fish can fly, the dogs and cats dance together and all the flowers are edible.