Is The Nest Half Empty or Too Full?

After carefully analyzing the results of a scientific study held in my living room over a period of last Saturday, I have come to the conclusion that the theory of the empty nest is a myth.

According to the bogus empty nest theory, a parent’s house becomes empty of radios blaring the theme to Iron Man, cell phones with top ten ring tones, and empty pizza boxes for extended periods of time such as between 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. on Friday nights. The house becomes strangely silent and can be used for random activities such as sleep or dialing the local hospitals to see if the nestling is lying about in a luxurious private room racking up enough charges to bring on a personal visit from your insurance adjustor.

For a while I had one left in the nest and one fluttering about in the nearby vicinity, but my lesson came quickly: Nests are never half full. It only takes one teenage bird with a cell phone and video game controller to make the nest party central for every chickadee in the treetops. It’s an amazing fact of nature that the human teenagers can actually produce more human teenagers. This happens at an alarming rated equaled only by the number of dirty dishes that appear in the sink the moment you turn on the dishwasher, or laundry that appears in the basket when you wash that last load of delicates.

I’ve decided there must be a transmitter of some type in the video game controller. Whenever the thing so much as aims at an alien at my house, teenage boys come swarming in through the doors like house flies in July. They buzz around the kitchen soaking up beverages and spare pork rinds and settle on the living room furniture, rubbing their hands together while their gaze fastens to the onscreen action. I think they’re attracted to the light.

My own nestlings have recently performed evasive maneuvers; the one that was here is gone and the one that was gone isn’t. I’m not sure what that will mean in terms of luring more of the flock to my perch, but I have a bad feeling that there’s a team of swallows out there ready to migrate. I've seen Alfred Hitchcock's movie, The Birds. I’d better stock the refrigerator.

Bar None

Man was fearfully and wonderfully made. And God looked at man, rubbed his chin, and said, “Man is lonesome. He needs someone who can remember to put a new bar of soap in the shower.” So God made woman. A helpmate for the man; someone who could find the mustard behind the milk in the refrigerator, and who could produce two clean, matching socks from dust mites in the air at 6:30 a.m., and who would emerge from the shower with a $20 hot oil frizz-reduction hair conditioning treatment streaming down her shoulders to locate and unwrap a new bar of soap so that the next person would not have to shower using the last bit of dandruff shampoo as a body scrub. Only God knows why a man, who can remember the quarterly scores from every Super Bowl from the dawn of civilization to present day replays, cannot remember to replace the soap when he leaves the shower. Somewhere between reaching for the towel and stirring creamer into his coffee, his priorities shift.
But while God is chuckling over the soap sliver bit, woman is in the kitchen raising her hands to heaven and crying, “Lord, never mind the soap. Why can’t man learn to put the twist tie back on the bread? Why does he have to do that twirl and tuck thing with the bread wrapper? You know I hate that.”
And God smiled. “He’s innovative.”
Then woman heads to the laundry room to bring new life to dingy whites and to zap spaghetti spots with her miracle stain remover stick. And she cries to heaven again, “Lord, why can’t he simply place his dirty underwear in the laundry basket? Why must he do that foot-flip snatch and grab act with his boxers? You know I’m expected to applaud every single time he catches them.”
And God nodded knowingly. “He’s creative.”
“Okay, God, I get it. Those little things that make me crazier than a salesclerk on Black Friday are the things he uses to make a better way in life. But just between you and me, God, what about that thing with the remote? Why can’t he leave the TV on one channel for longer than it takes to focus on David Letterman’s tooth gap?”
“Oh, that’s easy, God replied. That’s to keep you from having to watch three straight hours of How to Make Your Own Bait on the Fishing Channel.”
“You ARE wise,” Woman whispered. “Tell me, though. In heaven will he wake up every morning scratching his backside?”
“I’m working on that one,” answered God pensively. “The trouble is we have a problem with everybody staying clean.”
“In heaven?” The woman was astounded. “How can that be?”
“Well,” sighed God. “Everybody’s so busy watching television and looking for the mustard in the refrigerator, that nobody ever remembers to put new soap in the shower.”