Gee, I Don't Know Why It Bothered Me EITHER.....

I have no idea why some stories from the past spring into my mind. They aren't significant enough to warrant the brain space they're taking up. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a "delete" key for the hard drives that are our brains. Or better yet, a "defrag" command?

I also have no idea why I feel compelled to share such stories with you. I suppose it's an effort to ease my suffering by having you share the burden of carrying these tidbits of thought along with me.

Way back, a long time ago, when Sweet Girl was a teenager but not yet driving (that has nothing to do with this story), I came home to an empty house. I suppose Hubby was still at work, and Sweet Girl was probably at band practice. Hubby and I hadn't been married too long.

I went to the hall bathroom that Sweet Girl and I shared (that's the key to our happy marriage - we've never shared a bathroom), and in the trashcan I saw the wrapper and adhesive strip from a ... feminine product. It wasn't mine. It wasn't Sweet Girl's. It wasn't my mother-in-law's (not by about 30 years). It wasn't my step-daughter's. Her daughter wasn't old enough yet.

To say I was puzzled would be an understatement. Nothing was missing from the house, and there was nothing else to indicate anyone had been in our house. But clearly someone HAD. I just about lost my mind trying to figure out the mystery.

I wondered if Sweet Girl had left school without permission and come home to take care of a problem, but she said no. And because she had never lied to me before, I believed her.

I mentioned it to Hubby. His response, so typically male, was defensive. "If I was gonna have another woman in the house while you're gone, it wouldn't be one who needed THAT!" Kind of hard to argue with the logic, but still.

I assured him I wasn't accusing him, I was just baffled. He wasn't worried about it, since there was nothing else amiss, and I guess I eventually forgot about it too. I needed those bytes in my brain for useful things like what we were having for dinner and what lesson plan I was going to teach that week.

Weeks later ... perhaps even months later ... my mother mentioned VERY CASUALLY and almost in passing that she had gone to pick up my niece (Sweet Girl's age) somewhere, and she had a sudden female-type **situation**. She knew our house was never locked, so they came by here for my niece to take care of her **situation**. (That's what they call it in Jamaica, by the way. They don't have "problems," they have "situations." And you have to say it with a Jamaican accent.)

I was immensely relieved to have the mystery solved, but I was severely annoyed that Mom hadn't mentioned it before then. Perhaps it would have been decent to leave a note or something? When I tried to explain to Mom the degree of consternation it had caused the entire household, she was confused.

"I don't see why it was such a big deal," she said.

Wait. You lock your car doors IN MY DRIVEWAY, yet you don't think it's a big deal that someone has been in my house?

Hmph.