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Tue, Oct 07 2008 

Published July 11, 2008 01:50 pm - What sort of parent tries to walk into his or her 10-year-old daughter’s room without an escort, a map and some sort of weapon? I’m thinking a flame-thrower here.

Mike Pound: Child's decor threatens bodily harm



I almost killed myself Thursday morning while walking into our 10-year-old daughter Emma’s room.

In retrospect, the whole thing was probably my fault. What sort of parent tries to walk into his or her 10-year-old daughter’s room without an escort, a map and some sort of weapon? I’m thinking a flame-thrower here.

I don’t mean to suggest that Emma’s room is messy. Wait ... yes I do. But that’s really not the point. Most 10-year-old kids have messy rooms.

When I was 10, I shared my bedroom with my three brothers. Imagine, if you will, a room shared by a 10-year-old me and my three brothers. Feel free to get violently ill if you must.

Not too long ago, a friend of Emma’s walked into her room and expressed amazement at how neat it was. Now, based on the condition of Emma’s room at the time, it was obvious to me that Emma’s friend was either:

No. 1: Lying.

No. B: Trying to be nice.

Or

No. Trois: Indicating that her own room was really gross.

Thursday, the thing that almost killed me in Emma’s room was not technically in her room — it was on her door. Specifically, it was hanging from her doorway.

See, several months ago, when my wife and Emma redid her bedroom, they thought it would be cute to hang long strands of colorful string-like material from her doorway. And it was. Until we realized we had to walk through the long strands of colorful string-like material to get into Emma’s room. Then we decided that they were not so much cute as they were a pain in the Limbaugh.

The long strands of colorful string-like material seem to be more of a pain in the Limbaugh for me than they are for Emma or my wife. I guess because I’m taller than they are but, I don’t know. For whatever reason, the long strands of colorful string-like material tend to wrap around my neck whenever I try to walk into Emma’s room.

Of course, when that happens I chuckle and calmly remove the long strands of colorful sting-like material and say something like, “Alas, I have mistakenly gotten these long strands of colorful string-like material wrapped around my neck. How silly of me. I shall now gently remove them.”

OK, that’s a lie.

What I do is flail about like Jesse Jackson going after Barack Obama, frantically trying to rip the strings off my neck, while cursing whoever it was who thought hanging long colorful strands of string-like material in a doorway would be cute.



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