Where to hide a USB stick.

Late last night, a friend of mine posted a meme on her book of faces that said, "You have 30 minutes to hide a USB Drive in your house.  Your house will be raided by Police. Where do you hide it so it won't be found?"  My brain instantly came up with this brilliant hiding place:  a snack-sized Ziploc bag in a bottle of shampoo in the bathroom.  

First and most obviously, you can't stick it in conditioner; that's way too thick.  You wrap up the usb in the Ziploc, making sure that all the air is out, and shove it down into the shampoo bottle.  You could use a butter knife or something to cram it all the way down in there.  Shake it up for good measure.  The cops, or whoever is gonna raid your house, are obviously going to take your hard drives and whatever electronics they can find.  Are they going to take a shampoo bottle? Chances are slim.  I really gotta use that in something I write now, and I'm not including this blog.   

My friend responded that I had come up with a fantastic hiding place.  That got me thinking of all the hiding places that I had when I was a kid.  

One of the round balls on top of my bedpost was hollow and had a tendency to come off.  I would hide notes from friends in there.  I had a stash of cash in this small cedar box that belonged to my granny that I hid in the bottom of my hamper (I did my own laundry by the time I owned it, so my Mom never knew about it). Underneath the bottom drawer of my dresser, I would stash comic books.  I never hid my journal. I never really thought about hiding my journal. At least, not until I got to college and was living with my Dad and stepmom. 

My Mom, I have no idea why, always seemed to think the worst of me.  My cousin once told me that my Mom had told her that she suspected I was on drugs.  My cousin responded by laughing at her and telling her that I was most definitely not on drugs.  Seriously, y'all, I didn't even try pot until a vacation to Las Vegas when I was 38, and at that point it was (and still is) recreationally legal.  

I was a good kid.  Did I dream big and attempt to plan road trips and/or [mis]adventures that were far more ambitious than I would ever be able to pull off?  Yes.  Did I stay out past curfew? On multiple occasions, yes.  My Mom, however, would fall asleep around 9:30pm, so breaking curfew wasn't this horrible thing for me.  I would generally be home within 10 or 15 minutes of it.  I would always call and let my Mom know where I was, or I would tell her where I was going.  My friends were all geeks, and we made up the majority of our high school's various academic teams. 

I will admit that my Mom and I were like oil and water.  We would get into screaming matches. She was a perfectionist, and I was far from perfection.  Things had to be a certain way; her house always had to be as clean as a museum, and the smallest infraction of anything that she deemed to be wrong or bad would generally end up with me being grounded for a month.  I have joked before that during the 6th grade, when we moved to northern Indiana (during which time my parents were divorcing and my mom was full-on menopausal and yours truly was her favorite verbal punching bag), I was grounded that entire year.  I'm not kidding.  There were only a few weeks that year that I was allowed to leave the house. 

In the beginning, I accepted my fate.  I would stew in my room, with only the radio and the journal my friend Marisa gave me when we moved to keep me company.  Every week I would get a letter from my Dad containing a $2 bill.  I actually still have the first one he sent me framed on the wall next to my desk.  As I got older, the amount increased to $5, then eventually $10 when I had a car and was driving myself to school or wherever.  My Mom would take half of whatever he sent and make me put it in savings.  Depending on how I had behaved or how I had done in school that week (I was forced to get weekly progress reports from my teachers), she might even take the whole thing.  

At first, she would make me open the letter in front of her and read it to her.  I have no idea why. Did she expect my Dad to say something about her? I have no idea.  Eventually, she would just leave it on the kitchen table for me and remind me that I needed to give her half of whatever I got.  While there was nothing to hide as far as what my Dad wrote me, looking back, I told my Mom everything - from the kids teasing me in school about my clothes, my weirdness, my braces, my glasses (kids are mean) to when my now-wife and I started "going out."  I pretty much told her everything.  And she still accused me of being this drugged-out alcoholic?!  It made no sense whatsoever.  The older I got, the more I saw that her opinion of me was rather... shallow.  And negative.   The truth of the matter was much simpler - I was undiagnosed AuDHD.  I was a dreamer. I wanted adventure.  I wanted "walkies." And I wasn't getting them from my Mom.  My Mom had me on a tight leash, and I was controlled.  She tried to force me into submission, and me, being the weirdo that I am, fought hard against that.

I learned how to hide things from her. I never hid my journal, and I have no idea if she read it or not, but I learned to hide things from her.  I learned how to sneak out.  And the worst thing I did?  I used my allowance to order pizza.  Sometimes, I would have it delivered directly to my window (which made the delivery guy laugh pretty hard).  

When I would come home from school, I would put my bike back in the garage (I rode my bike to school if the weather was good), and leave the back garage door unlocked.  I learned how to pop out the screen on my window and would sneak out, get my bike out of the garage, and go for a short bike ride around the block or to the comic book store a few blocks away.  Occasionally, I would get caught reading a comic book instead of studying. Nine times out of ten, though, my Mom wouldn't see that my vocabulary workbook had the latest issue of X-Men in it.  

I never had to sneak around when I was with my Dad.  At least, not until he married my stepmom.  At some point in my 20s, I was a mom by that point; he admitted to me that she didn't think very highly of me, either.  She had told him that I would never amount to anything (which I'm laughing all the way to the bank on that one).  I knew she snooped in my room, and sometimes I would hide things for her to find.  I had a poster from the movie "The Craft" that she thought was a sign that I was definitely into witchcraft and was possibly possessed. One morning, I found her praying in front of my closed door before she went off to school (she was a teacher), asking for Jesus to make the demons leave the house, blah blah blah.  

I, much to her surprise, opened my door (it was like 6:30 in the morning, my Dad had already left the house, which is why I think she could get away with this - I slept like the dead back then, nothing bugged me), and promptly told her that it was 6:30 in the morning, that my classes did not start until 10am and the demons wanted to know if she could "kindly keep it down."  I closed the door and crawled back into bed. 

When I got home that evening, my Dad was waiting for me in the living room and asked me what all that "witchcraft stuff" in my room was.  I was like, "What, The Craft poster? Mickie got it for me from the movie theater. You took me to see it when it came out, remember?" He didn't say much of anything, but I took the opportunity to launch into my own diatribe about how my stepmom had been praying in front of my door, how I felt it was not only rude but so what if I was Pagan or Wiccan, that they were both perfectly acceptable ways to worship and as a sociology teacher he should be more respectful of other peoples' religions.  

That summer, when I went back to Northern Indiana, my Dad and my stepmom took a trip to Salem, Massachusetts, and she came up with a specific module to teach her history class about the Salem Witch Trials.  I think she somehow thought it was a slight on me.  She knew that I have always wanted to visit Salem and New Orleans, and to this day I still haven't.  It's on my bucket list.  I have the money; I just don't have the time (or honestly the urge to travel at the moment). 

It's a common trope for most kids to say, "I'm not going to do what my parents did to me."  We all have some sort of childhood trauma, whether we realize it or not.  I grew up wanting to be able to talk with my kids, not scream at them like my Mom did.  What I didn't realize, though, was that I bottled a lot of stuff up like my Dad did.  I have spent the better part of my marriage with Kacy learning how to communicate and be open, especially the last 10 years or so.  

I have also always tried to be open and honest with my kids.  I don't snoop in their rooms like my stepmom did.  When they were little (and I really kind of want to start this up again, but they'd probably think I'm nuts), before bed, I would ask them what the favorite part of their day was.  They're mostly grown now.  I've got a 27-year-old, an 18-year-old who just started college, and a 15-year-old who just started high school.  They are all at different points in their very young lives, starting out and learning how to navigate in an increasingly changing world.  They know that I would never want to intentionally break their trust.  If I'm worried about them, I'm going to bring it up to them, and I'm going to wait for them to come to me with whatever problem they're having.  I don't want them to feel scared about coming to me the way I was scared to go to my Mom or Dad if I was having issues. 

My Mom would dismiss my issues, telling me there were bigger things to deal with.  My Dad would try to bribe me with a dopamine hit of root beer or ice cream.  I like to think they both tried... I know that I try with my kids.  

All said and done, my kids will never have to hide a USB stick.  If they do, I'll help them with that.  They're my kids.  I will do anything for them.  It makes me sad that some parents say that, but their actions speak louder than words.  I also understand that there are different types of parents out there.  Some are hands-off as soon as the kid is 18.  Some just don't get along with their kids and have to take a step back.  Some people have kids and really shouldn't.  There are all types of people in this world and I try very hard not to judge people for making the choices they make, as long as they are aware of the consequences of their choices.  I very much believe the whole it takes a village philosophy.  As adults, we have to show future generations that our actions have consequences.  We also have to show and normalize that it's okay to ask for help and apologize if we're wrong.  And, most importantly, we have to mean it when we say we're sorry.  I also know that even as an adult, every day I'm learning and growing.  Some days I learn more than others, and some days those lessons are harder than others.  We have to give ourselves grace with the process and be kind not just to ourselves, but to others who are on their own journey.  Does that mean we have to tolerate every little behavior? No.  Feel free to put up those boundaries.  Those are healthy.  What's important is learning and knowing yourself.  Sometimes I change on the daily.  Be good to yourself and, from my personal experience, things will turn out the way they're supposed to.