Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

You’ve probably heard someone say, “this is why we can’t have nice things.” It’s usually a half-serious quip made after someone drops something or a joke about someone who accidentally breaks things often.

With kids in the house it’s often a good idea not to have nice things. There’s no sense in putting out a Persian rug when a kid’s potty training. Why get out the fine china for dinner when you know at least one plate will get dropped?

Keeping kids from nice things, or the nice things from them, isn’t a new concept. We don’t have fine china and Persian rugs anyway. But what has surprised me is the sorts of things it turns out we can’t have with kids in the house.

Like door stoppers. This has to be one of the most ridiculous things, but those spring style door stoppers are almost impossible to have with kids around. Not only does the 3-year-old-and-under crowd think they’re super fun to hit so they make a “boing” sound, but little kids love to try and eat the small plastic or rubber cap on the end of the door stopper.

The good thing is these door stoppers easily unscrew from the wall. But when I look at a kid and say, “see, this is why we can’t have nice things” who thought I would be talking about door stoppers?

Or how about liquid soap. The younger boys just can’t resist playing with the soap dispenser in their bathroom. We’ve seen it for years. They compulsively pump it out, get it on the mirror, or add water to the dispenser. It’s the bane of my wife’s existence.

We’ve had to ration the quantity that goes in the dispenser to avoid waste or revert to bar soap for hand washing many times. Yes, one of the nice things we can’t have with my kids is liquid soap in the bathroom. And you can’t get much more basic than not being able to have liquid soap.

Except you can. It turns out pockets are nice things we can’t have as well. The situation plays out like this: a boy finds a small rock, Lego piece, or marble. He puts it in the pocket of his jeans for safe keeping. The jeans go into the hamper (everything stays in the pockets). The jeans go into and out of the washing machine (everything stays in the pockets). The jeans go into the dryer (everything comes out of the pockets and gets caught in between the tumbling drum and the side of the dryer).

The tremendous thumping sound a tiny stone, or a Lego mini-figure head can cause if trapped inside the drum is incredible. The way a small pencil, or coin, or bone from a small reptile (?!) can get caught in that space is surely something the manufacturer never anticipated.

But it happens. And keeps happening. So every time I have to disassemble the dryer to remove pocket debris caught inside I’ll keep saying:

See? This is why we can’t have nice things. Like pockets.