>The Monsters in Our Closets

>Last night, we rented Monster House, a big budget, computer-animated movie about a house that attacks and eats people. The movie was cute (heightened by Baby dancing around at the end, chanting “Yay, mean old man, Yay mean old man!”) but when I went upstairs to go to bed, it hit me like a Steve Madden clog to the face that Monster House was a merely thinly-veiled analogy about living with teenagers.

Because just as I reached the top of the staircase, the slightly-open door to my 13-year-old stepdaughter’s room slammed shut, just like it always does any time an adult is within 25 feet of the premises. Some parents would get upset about this apparent lack of hospitality, but I prefer to believe instead that when the girls’ doors slam, it only means they are trying to protect their father and me from the flying purple people eater that resides within.

Of course, I don’t want to leave them alone in a room with that kind of evil. Frequently, I knock at the door, only to hear a muffled, “Just a minute!” and an ensuing battle of bumps and shufflings and reassuring cries of “I’m dressing!” before the door is at last opened five minutes later. If I’m still waiting (and generally, I’m not), I try to appear sympathetic to their obvious dilemma, because I realize that banishing a monster to the confines of an already overstuffed closet couldn’t have been easy. And I try to be grateful that at least our monsters don’t smell- I’ve heard some parents’ admit that their teens are constantly opening their windows, no doubt trying to rid their rooms of some monstrous odor.

Generally, I try not to enter our Monster Rooms, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. When my parents came to visit a few weeks ago, I was forced to wrangle our monsters into submission for an entire weekend. They had made absolute wrecks of both the girls’ rooms, leaving candy wrappers everywhere (apparently, monsters prefer Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups), vomiting tangled profusions of clothing across floors, beds and chairs (Monster brand of choice: Forever 21), and scattering a trail of enticing, folded-up notes for me to follow like breadcrumbs (Of course I didn’t read them! How else would I not know that Amanda and Chad broke up because Amanda made out with Steven after school last Friday?!). As I cleaned, I was filled with admiration that the girls put up with such horribly messy monsters and yet had never once complained.

My younger stepdaughter is so solicitous of our well-being, in fact, that when Hubs tried to help her find a missing gift card last night by digging through the stickers, hairbands and stationery jammed within her dressing table drawers, she hovered over him, clearly worried that he might find some evidence of monster activity. I think it’s wonderful that she tries to protect us this way, but Hubs needed some convincing afterward of her obvious good intentions.

So parents, I urge you to treat your teenagers with sympathy and understanding if their bedroom is suddenly harder to get inside than your safety deposit box. They’re only trying to protect you from the foul-breathed, fur-matted creature that has taken up residence within. No wonder they’re struggling in Advanced Pre-Calculus; now that I know what I know, my 16-year-old is totally off the hook.

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