He's eco friendly

Mark's decided to do his part for the environment by recycling more. But as usual, his motivation is more about personal gain than doing good.

The recycling he had in mind was not cans or newspapers, but rather clothes. School clothes, to be exact. Which I discovered while doing laundry yesterday.

I dumped out Mark's hamper in search of blue school pants, and came up empty-handed. There should've been at least one pair of pants in there.

"Did you wear dirty clothes to school today?" I asked him during dinner.

He vigorously denied it. "They're all blue," he explained, pointing at his pants. "They all look the same."

"So where's yesterday's uniform?" I persisted.

He thought really hard, and when he couldn't come up with a good answer, he got defensive instead. "It doesn't matter!" he told me, exasperated.

"It does matter!" I said. "It's gross!"

Mark sighed loudly. He just doesn't understand my obsession of all things clean -- clothes, bodies, bedrooms, etc.

I changed my tact a bit. "Seriously, is it that hard to just put the clothes in the hamper?" I asked. "The hamper is literally in front of where you change."

"Yeah, but I have to get in bed, which is all the way in the other direction," he told me.

"You can't take two steps back to the bed?"

"No, because I don't walk to my bed -- I jump. And if I jump from the hamper, I'll hit the bedpost." He simulated a diving, then crashing, motion toward his bed.

And then I realized I was arguing with a 9-year-old. A 9-year-old who believes diving into bed is perfectly normal.

I realized how ridiculous the whole conversation was. I opened my mouth again, to ask how he got to the hamper to put the shoes and clothes hangers I also found in there. Instead, I thought better of it, closed my mouth, and cut my losses.

"Just try a little harder, would you?" I asked.

Mark smiled and nodded. He thought the discussion was over thanks to his mad logic skills, whereas I thought it was more akin to arguing with my cat. There really was no point to it.

Or was there?...Training the cat to put the clothes in the hamper wasn't such a bad idea after all. I bet I'd be more successful than training the boy to do it.