6/2/01

Let the horror begin. (Here's where the rant becomes a little more personal.) I just graduated from a moderately prestigious, private, 4-year liberal arts college, in the middle of May. (yay, etc.) I desperately wanted to get a good job right off the bat and be able to live on my own in the "big city," and not have to spend another summer rotting away in this little navel of the MidWest. Oh, I'm sure there are much worse places to be than here, but when you're twenty-two and living at home, and you don't have a job lined up, the hell has only begun. I'm the oldest of 5, the youngest being 5, and four of us are girls. Which means, living in a 3-bedroom house, that I get to share a pokey little refurbished attic with three younger girls.

Oh, the rapture.

It didn't help much that I had my own room in an off-campus house for the last year of school, and even when I had a roommate, she was my age and we respected each other's things. This is very important to me, because most of my things end up in the garbage heap thanks to the ankle-biters and their destructive natures. Even worse, I like my things in good condition, especially if I'm going to be furnishing (in the distant future) my own place.

All this may seem very shallow. Well....it is. But my junk is an extension of me....and when they don't respect my junk, they don't respect me. And at this time in my life, back at home, being treated like a kid again...respect is very, very important to me. Mainly because I'm not getting it the way I've become accustomed to it, and it's very irritating.

In more recent news, I've started clearing out the random junk cluttering up their side of the room. Oh, not throwing out the things they cherish, but old toys they haven't played with for years and are broken, and old clothes from the 80's, etc. Things that are just taking up space, in other words. And they didn't care a bit.

So, I've come to conclude that they don't really care about stuff....not really. Is all my fussing a futile endeavor? I sure hope not. Maybe it'll get through their heads that I'm not yelling at them to be mean or stingy with my stuff--I have no problem loaning things out to them, if they ask--but because I just want to know that they think highly enough of me to actually think before borrowing something. I don't know, maybe that's asking too much of teenagers....but I'm hoping they'll prove they're not disrespectful ninnies, as the rest of their generation is portrayed.

Another perspective on this (by my oh-so-observant brother) is that I'm being anal-retentive, pretentious, and more than a little proud. Then again, he has his own room and my sisters aren't allowed in it, so perhaps I can't take his opinion without a large grain of salt.

~~Leandra