Just the latest in a string of torments from my teens

When you are the only man in a house full of women, you experience many torments. I have the scars, visible and not so visible, small gifts from my teenage daughters. And they invent new torments every day.

 This last one, I did not see coming. Not that I have some kind of radar that would warn me of imminent misery.

It’s easier to just take ‘em like a man – or rather, like a broken down shell of a man who just wants to be left alone as the particles of his former man-self flake away into the great nothingness that is fatherhood. 

In a way, it would be easy to endure any particular torment if I could pass it off as just an accident, an unintended lack of foresight, or a one time slip of the challenged teenage mind. But it doesn’t happen that way.

For instance, I like to use the treadmill in our bonus room, and I like to watch the news while I tread. But every morning, before the sun rises, I am forced to get down on my hands and knees and search for the missing remote control.

And every morning, I make the rounds asking my daughters where it is so I can get on with my life. And when I do, each one of them peeks out from underneath their cover and looks at me as if to say “What is a remote control.”

And each time, my blood pressure soars to heretofore uncharted heights as I croak out a reminder, “It turns on the television.” That’s when they turtle back under the covers and scream at me – “I don’t know. Leave me alone.”

Rather than point out that they were all in the bonus room the previous night mesmerized by the latest episode of “When Trash Goes Trashy,” I have found that the torment is mitigated somewhat by just curling up in a ball and sucking my thumb.

But their latest attack has left me dumfounded. At first, I thought that I was experiencing early onset dementia when my socks went missing. I could not recall that I did anything with my socks other than put them on and take them off – there was no reason for them to be AWOL.

Waiting until my daughters were fully conscious sentient beings, I asked in a non-challenging fashion, “Has anyone seen my socks?”

In response, all three of them jumped up, grabbed their bags and blew out the door on the way to school. Five minutes later, the school principal called to ask if there was a problem, that all of my kids had arrived at school on time and did they need to see a counselor.

That led me to believe that my daughters might have something to do with my socks. The thought puzzled me as they had always maintained that every article of my clothing was GROSS. Not “gross” but GROSS. Why would they raid my closet?

When I shared my thoughts with my wife, I found her to be curiously evasive. “Why would they do that?” I wondered aloud as she pretended to read the paper. I pressed the issue, “What do you think?”

“I told them they could borrow some of your socks on occasion,” she said defensively. “They match their eye liner.”

In other words, my wife suddenly morphed into a modern day Ma Parker, riding herd on a notorious gang of sock thieves. “You know, they have all my socks,” I politely pointed to my naked feet.

“Don’t be so selfish,” she said, glaring at me.

So now I don’t exercise, I don’t watch TV, and I don’t wear socks unless I can borrow a pair from my daughters. It’s just a matter of time until we have our own trashy TV show.

Phillip Bond Sartain is a Gainesville, Georgia attorney and freelance writer. Email Phillip at attypbs@mindspring.com