charlie in hopkinton, massachusetts (age 17) and his little brother (age 15) spent a good deal of time scheming about how to respond to their mother’s notes around the bathroom before deciding upon shaving cream as their weapon of choice.
p.s. matilda: the most passive-aggressive child in fiction? (also, muggle-wump: the most passive-aggressive monkey?) discuss!
related: living with an adolescent (abridged)

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109 responses so far ↓
#1 jenechka
My mom tells me to get out of her bathroom all the time too!
Feb 24, 2008 at 9:40 pm rating: +1 
#2 Canthz_B

A good deal of time scheming and the best these guys could come up with is “NEVER!!”
Feb 24, 2008 at 9:52 pm rating: +11 
#3 Canthz_B

“We weren’t using your bathroom, mom.
Just changing the videotape.”
Feb 24, 2008 at 9:55 pm rating: +6 
#4 zenvelo
maybe if Mom had taught them to flush….
Feb 24, 2008 at 9:59 pm rating: +3 
#5 Wade

Forget the sign.
Is that a bottle of liquor in the shower?
Feb 24, 2008 at 10:02 pm rating: +6 
#6 raiseyourglass
I call bullsh**!
She typed it on the computer to post it in her own bathroom, yeah right!
Feb 24, 2008 at 10:05 pm rating: 0 
#7 amy d

Your mother doesn’t live here. Oh, wait. She does.
Feb 24, 2008 at 10:06 pm rating: +13 
#8 Sarah

Is that a beer bottle in the shower?
Feb 24, 2008 at 10:16 pm rating: +1 
#9 Canthz_B

If the boys had a bathroom maybe they would use it. What are they supposed to do in a “bathroon”?
Feb 24, 2008 at 10:21 pm rating: +1 
#10 Mystic
Are we really sure that’s shaving cream?
Feb 24, 2008 at 10:37 pm rating: +1 
#11 Tyler

It looks like a resturant bathroom or something with the occasional black tile on the floor.
Feb 24, 2008 at 11:17 pm rating: 0 
#12 Kelly
REVEN!
Feb 24, 2008 at 11:41 pm rating: +6 
#13 bellabeastie
Pretty soon Mom will be standing by the door with a hatchet…. REDRUM…. Yikes.
Team OK I Will Use My Own Bathroom … and clean my room… and make my own breakfast and do my homework…and..
cut my hair… or something..
Just Please Please no more freaky notes or I will have to resort to drinking beer in your shower. You have been warned….
Feb 25, 2008 at 12:16 am rating: +2 
#14 bellabeastie
Film at eleven.
Feb 25, 2008 at 12:29 am rating: +1 
#15 Grimfool_Reluctant

Mom’s probably upset because “someone” keeps using all her hand lotion and tissues . . .
Feb 25, 2008 at 1:57 am rating: +6 
#16 ErikaBlare
Sorry, I must side with Team Mom’s Only Clean And Private Refuge In The House. Go piss on your own toilet seat, you nasty little boys!
Feb 25, 2008 at 2:42 am rating: +10 
#17 fangelohio
I think they’ll put plastic wrap under the seat next. Then they will be on the eleven o’clock news.
Feb 25, 2008 at 5:12 am rating: +1 
#18 anglophile

I think she’s mostly afraid they go in there to try on her pink nightie….
Feb 25, 2008 at 7:22 am rating: +2 
#19 Rumblefish
I think the boys should have TP’d the bathroom.
Feb 25, 2008 at 7:29 am rating: +1 
#20 Sandy
What’s a bathroon? And I cannot believe the originality of the response …
NEVER! Are you sure they are 17 and 15; sounds like 7 and 5.
Feb 25, 2008 at 7:53 am rating: +1 
#21 GhostWriter

You know, this just goes to show you that American Vice law is stuck in the middle ages.
Can you believe that we will have to wait three full years until this can legally be turned into a porno movie?
Feb 25, 2008 at 8:19 am rating: 0 
#22 Writerrejected

A mother who leaves passive aggressive notes around the house during her kids’ childhood seems like a nightmare to me. A PAN training ground for her own children?
Anyway, I’d love to see those other notes:
1) Do not take a dump in the clean diaper I just put on you. Do I look like your maid?
2) Thank you for spitting upon me EVERY TIME you breast feed; I really LOVE smelling like rotten milk all day!!!!
3) I’m pretty sure some poor homeless child would very much like your pretty bedroom,and at least SHE would make her bed every day. Love you, Mom.
Feb 25, 2008 at 8:39 am rating: +4 
#23 claw71

These kids are lame. They should have written R3V3N on the wall facing the mirror in mommy’s bright red lipstick. There’s just no creativity in kids today.
As for the mother, putting up a note is stupid. You have to establish authority over your children. She should do like my mother did and burn those kids with Virginia Slims. I’ll tell you what, that kept my butt in line. Everytime I start to do wrong I look down at one of those scars and I feel the burn. I can still smell the charred flesh with a refreshing hint of menthol. Good times.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
Feb 25, 2008 at 9:19 am rating: +8 
#24 unholyghost2003

That is the trouble with boys. They make their OWN bathroom so nasty that not even THEY will use it … then move on to the other bathrooms in the house. The migration wouldn’t be so bad if it was just for the occasional wee, but they can tolerate the stench and filth of their own bathroom for the 60 sec it takes to pee. No, they only use Mom’s clean and comfortable bathroom when they are settling in for a giant, smelly 20 min shit. This renders Mom’s bathroom unuseable for the next 3 hours and she has to get ready to go to work to pay for all that T.P. they just wasted!
Feb 25, 2008 at 10:09 am rating: +2 
#25 Lurker
I dunno, wouldn’t it be better to just teach the kids to not do whatever it is they’re doing in the bathroom that makes her not want to share it with them?
We had two bathrooms in the house I grew up in, and everybody used both of them. If we made a mess, we got punished for making a mess, but we weren’t banned from the room.
Feb 25, 2008 at 11:14 am rating: 0 
#26 secondsout

Does this mother really need PANs to enforce? She’s the mother! Take away their Guitar Hero, and have the father go after these little shits with a belt.
Feb 25, 2008 at 11:54 am rating: +1 
#27 mamason

I’m tired of it
no more pooping for no one not at all but for me and my bathroom is no pooping room or using me for a place to poop your pooping at no more my bathroom is my bathroom and no one elses bathroom don’t demand me what to do in my bathroom either Janice
Feb 25, 2008 at 12:15 pm rating: +10 
#28 claw71

Teen boys: the locusts of household restrooms.
Loo by loo they move through the house, taking long masturbatory showers with the curtain on the outside of the tub. They deficate in massive quantities and never flush. They consume roll after roll of toilet paper but yet still manage to leave enough poo in their cracks to ferilize a garden. Clothes, wet towels and Twinkie wrappers seem to multiply exponentially every second a boy is in the bathroom.
Boys will urinate two at a time, dueling each other with streams of urine that manage to find corners you didn’t know existed. Boys are the reason stores like Home Depot make all their money selling bathroom kits.
But yet it’s the women’s public restrooms that are the most vile.
Feb 25, 2008 at 12:51 pm rating: +6 
#29 Heidi
No supper for you!!!
Feb 25, 2008 at 12:52 pm rating: 0 
#30 Meagan
OK, somebody is going to have to explain Claw to me because I don’t get it. He’s gross and stupid. Child abuse isn’t funny, that goes for you too Secondsout. Belts and cigarettes are a cruel reality for too many children. You two need to grow up.
Feb 25, 2008 at 3:12 pm rating: 0