Wednesday, December 17, 2008

BATTERIES!!

We have issues with batteries in our house of two adults and three children. I used to think that it was all of the kids (who seem to need batteries for everything) but I'm now convinced that it's just one--the teenager. He has an insatiable appetite for batteries. When he wants batteries he will do whatever it takes to get them. That's what led to this extreme measure...

Yep! I put all of our batteries into a locked box. Only Miss Sniz and I know the combination. It works great for the girls because now they are forced to ask mom or dad when they need batteries. Plus, I always know what we have on hand. However, the system doesn't work when your teenage son steals batteries from other devices in the house. It's incredibly frustrating when you hit a button on the remote only to discover that it doesn't have one or all of the batteries. Nine times out of ten they can be found in an Xbox controller. It drives me crazy!

But as annoying as it is, it's usually just a TV controller or something similar. It's the principle of the thing that really bothers me, but I've never felt comfortable getting all upset when it's just a remote control. Does that make sense? Well, it all changed yesterday...

I was driving home from work in the snow and freezing rain. The roads were treacherous. It was late. It was dark. I was in the car for hours and incredibly on edge (that's about two ticks beyond "annoyed") but I was dealing with things ok. I had a call on my cell phone and then it started beeping. The battery was running out. No worries. I have a charger in my car that I use all the time. I went to look for it and couldn't find it in the usual place. I must have moved it. Maybe it was in the trunk. Hmmmm.

I made it home with my phone beeping about every other minute. This is both annoying and ironic since the noise grates on your nerves while wasting precious battery at the same time. Thankfully, I didn't get into an accident or have problems with my car in the bitter cold, snow, freezing rain, dark, etc. But I still didn't know what had happened to my charger.

This morning as I was having coffee, the missing cell phone charger entered my mind again. Maybe I just managed to accidentally throw it away or something. That's when I remembered seeing another charger in the back of our minivan the other day. I'm not sure why I recalled this, but I remember at the time thinking something like, "Huh, I didn't realize that Will had a portable charger for his phone, too. I'll have to remember that in case I need to borrow it from him some time."

You see, his cell phone uses the same chargers (wall charger and home charger) as my phone and as Miss Sniz's phone. That's very handy. However, his phone has not had available minutes on it since he first purchased it in the spring. He's not willing to pay for more time to use the phone to make calls, but he likes carrying it around and playing games on it. I decided to go out to look at the charger before heading out to work this morning. If you haven't figured it out already, it was MY CHARGER!!!! If I would have been stuck in the cold, snow, ice, dark, crud, etc. last night without any juice in my cell phone and no charger, it would have been because my fifteen year old hijacked my charger from my car so he could play games in the back of the van!!!

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh my goodness I would have been livid! Have you guys tried rechargeable batteries and have a couple of rechargers laying around? That works great for us - everybody knows when they change out the batteries to plug the dead ones in when they take the charged ones out. On another topic - I was wondering if you guys were getting that freezing weather up there I keep hearing about. Guess it will be heading down this way after this heat wave we have pushes through...ugh, I'm really not complaining but I'm ready for a little bit of cooler weather now. :-)

K.I. said...

Hmmmm....maybe that would make a good stocking stuffer for him.

Uvulapie said...

Sounds like you need to have your "system" cleansed so you don't get bothered by such things.

Randy Spradlin said...

Oh the advantages of being single!

Unknown said...

Yesterday, Wil found a small bottle of paint conditioner near my craft paint box. It was the same size and shape of eyedrops, so he thought, why not put it in my eye? Good question. When Wil does something, there's not a lot of thought that goes into it. Thank goodness he didn't put craft paint in his eye!

Rebekah said...

So does that make you the Battery Nazi??
Just kidding- great idea to lock them away (the batteries not the kids)

JAM said...

Dude, we're living parallel lives with this scenario.

All these things went on a few years ago when my daughters were teens.

Years ago we started "forgetting" one present until later in the day, and then "find," this forgotten present so they could have a little more Christmas joy.

In their teens, the forgotten gift became rechargeable batteries in a couple of sizes and each girl also got a fast charger. If they stole batteries out of remotes and whatnot after that, they dealt with the meaner version of myself that has, on occasion, yelled and embarrassed them in front of their friends. Repeated as necessary and then the battery issues dried up for fear of the Mean Daddy freaking out and coming into their rooms without knocking and doing an on the spot analysis for whatever actions on my part might cause the most psychological damage on the offending daughter in front of their friends. Then in subsequent years they would get more batteries as the "forgotten" gift, and it wasn't looked forward to with as much zeal as before they became teens and battery eaters.

To quote the great philosopher, Bill Clinton, "I feel your pain."