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!!!