Out with the old, in with the new

I finally got my own column. I think my next project is getting my own desk. I don’t quite have my own station to work at now that Brett is back from his self-proclaimed two month vacation. I never expected to move back in with the folks after finishing college. It took me close to five years to get an Associate’s degree. At the time I never really knew what I wanted until the last two years I finally figured out coming back to the family business wasn’t such a bad plan. During that five years of me living in Pocatello, my parents must have talked amongst themselves about changing my old room into a room where they put everything. I don’t think it took them more than a week to fill the empty room with other things. The moving process has taken a lot longer than I would like, so this past weekend I decided to move some things around, and throw things away during the process. Things that I don’t think are necessary are little treasures to my mom. So I did it while she wasn’t around, all the while knowing that she would interrogate me over it.

Sure enough, she got home later that day and asked what had been saved and what hadn’t made it. I told her that a lot of it was just junk sitting up there. Apparently the stuff I threw out wasn’t trash, like the worn out shoes or the miniature Santa Claus jacket that goes to a troll doll that disappeared decades ago. After all of this went down, my mom, Debbie, asked my dad, Brett, if he had any part in it. He pleaded the fifth and said he had no knowledge of it. Just like when my brother Robert and I decided to cut down our tree in the back yard. We were specifically told not to cut down one of the branches, so what did we do? You guessed it, we cut it down. Brett came home later to tell us that no matter what really happened, Debbie was going to believe that he told us to do it. A lot of the time she is right. She tells us that she has eyes in the back of her head. Growing up there wasn’t a reason for me not to believe her. She could always tell when something was up, but I also had some room to improve on my poker face.

The same tactics she used on me when I was younger don’t work as well now. She threatens to ground me, and says she will take away my toys, good luck finding those things in my room, I don’t even know where they are. She also tried pulling the counting trick on me once too. “Don’t make me count to three, Preston. One! Two!… I never even let her get to two when I was younger, now I kind of wonder what will happen after three. Since I’m going to be living with my parents again, I’m sure I will be able to find out eventually. Let’s just hope she doesn’t decide to toss me out and keep the other stuff I was trying to get rid of.