Frumpy Mom: This is a real trashy column

Can someone please explain something to me? Because I’m obviously too dense to understand it.

First, here’s some background: We’ve lived in our nondescript little tract house now for 17 years of leafy suburban bliss. Lawnmowers and leaf blowers are the only sounds on the street, except for the barking of our dog, Lil Wayne, who’s determined to kill or at least maim every delivery man who approaches our doorstep.

My handsome young adult son, Cheetah Boy, has lived with me most of this time. We moved here when he was 10 years old, onto the kind of street where the neighbors sit in lawn chairs in their front yards and wave to people walking their dogs. (Dog walking is a major competitive sport here.)

It was quite a contrast from our former life in a 100-year-old shingle bungalow, in what writer Joan Didion would have called a “senseless killing neighborhood.”

See, after years of being a cop reporter, sent out at all hours of the night to rough neighborhoods to cover the latest crime spree, I had developed a skin like elephant hide to all sorts of mayhem. Gang shooting at midnight? No problem. Knock on doors and interview the neighbors while hoping no one breaks into your car. Move into a dense, tough neighborhood? Piece of cake.

When my kids were little and commented that they’d just heard a gunshot, I’d insist that it was just a car backfiring. Although I did find it a bit worrisome that my small children recognized the sound of gunshots. That probably wasn’t good, right?

We lived there because that was the only place I could afford to buy a house, plus I love historic homes. We had a huge front porch where I enjoyed sitting every night, usually with a glass of wine. And there wasn’t a single drive-by shooting during the first seven years I lived there.

But then, in 2006, a man was shot to death directly across the street from my house shortly after the kids had come in from playing in the front yard. Now, try as I might, even I couldn’t ignore something like that. Or pretend it didn’t happen.

I panicked and immediately began searching for a safer place to live. I went back to all the neighborhoods I’d first looked at before I adopted my kids. In those early childless days, I couldn’t imagine living in boring suburbia, where the only redeeming feature I could see was that there were grocery stores nearby.

“I’m just getting kids. I’m not getting a lobotomy,” I told myself back then, as I drove and drove, acquainting myself with every square inch of the city. I mean, there weren’t any cool coffee shops or bars to walk to. No Thai restaurants or vintage stores. Who could possibly stand to live in such a place?

But this time, I had a different attitude. Now that I actually had the kids, the idea of convenient grocery stores loomed much larger in my imagination than a cool hipster coffee shop I never had time to visit anyway, because I was too busy going to Scout meetings and Little League games.

After a long-yet-frantic search, I finally found a fixer-upper I could afford on a quiet, tree-lined street. There was a National Blue Ribbon school two blocks away and a high school nearby. No more driving anyone to school. Hooray. I think I would have moved to Dante’s Inferno for that.

And, weirdly, no one ever seemed to shoot off guns there, not even on New Year’s Eve.

Cheetah Boy and his sister have always had chores to do because kids must learn to take care of themselves. His most important chore was putting the trash cans on the curb each Monday night for pickup early Tuesday.

It’s really not hard to be reminded to do this when you see all the neighbors’ cans out front, awaiting their fate.

By my calculations, we have now lived in this house for some 884 weeks (assuming there actually are 52 weeks a year, which I really can’t be sure now due to my pesky chemo brain).

That means that on 884 Mondays in a row, my otherwise clever and talented son has failed to remember to put the trash cans onto the curb. I have to remind him every week, at which point he grumbles and (usually) does it. Yes. Every week.

So here’s my question (and, yes, I know some of you never thought I would get around to it.): Why can’t my son remember to put out the trash cans? Pretty sure if there were a video game about trash cans, he’d remember to play that. Or a TikTok with trash cans. He’d watch it. It’s just the actual real-life things he fails to recall.

Just for reference, he also forgets to unload the dishwasher and put a new roll on the toilet paper holder.

I’m just not sure what to do about this situation, which is why I’m turning to you, total strangers. You’ve helped me out in the past.

How do I get my son to remember the trash cans? Do I hide money under the lids? That occurred to me. I’m waiting to hear from you. My email is mfisher@scng.com.