A teen’s simple desire to drink a glass of water last Tuesday was cut short when her mother removed the full glass from her hand, emptied the water into the sink, and then placed the glass into the dishwasher.
“I hadn’t even taken a sip of it yet,” says beleaguered teen, Carlie Fulton, 15. “Why can’t I just have a glass of water? I live in a friggin’ prison.”
When questioned, Carlie’s mother, Deborah Fulton, 46, said she hadn’t realized that Carrie was still drinking from the glass. “Oh, I thought she was done,” says Deborah, inexplicably. “This whole house is covered in water glasses. Plus, I was about to run a load.”
“It was in my G-D hand, mom,” adds Carlie. “My HAND.”
Carlie, standing empty-handed in the kitchen, was left to consider her options. “I figured I could drink something right from the bottle, like orange juice or seltzer, but then mom would probably make me finish the whole thing so she could immediately put the bottle into the recycling bin,” says the teen.
“Yes, I would do that,” confirms Deborah.
Other members of the Fulton family report having various items mysteriously disappear mere moments after they’d been set down on a horizontal surface.
“I put my keys down on the kitchen counter last night,” says Derek Fulton, 17. “I went upstairs and immediately realized I had left a CD in the car that I wanted. By the time I got back downstairs, my keys were gone. It was mom. I know it.”
Deborah insists that she put Derek’s keys “where they go.” “The kitchen counter is not a logical place for keys,” she notes. “Why am I the only person who puts things where they go?”
Derek’s car was then towed because he had been parked in a two-hour zone for seven hours while the entire household searched fruitlessly for his keys, minus the help of Deborah, who was lying on the couch with her feet up, saying, “I cannot live like this.”
Other missing, well-organized items in the Fulton household include a remote control, two pairs of reading glasses, a cell phone charger, and a dog sweater.
In one contentious episode, Deborah’s husband, Mark Fulton, claims his toast was taken out of the toaster mid-toast and put back into the bread bag because according to Deborah “you can’t just leave things lying around.”
In the meantime, Carlie says she’s figured out a way to ingest fluids without her mom’s interruption: “I guess maybe I’ll start drinking beer in the woods.”
