Ann Landers once wrote: "if you have a messy child, never clean their room, just shut the door." Our younger son lived for about eleven years behind his door with a room resembling the aftermath of a mid-grade tsunami. He was Martha Stewart's worst nightmare, a being crossed between a six foot packrat and a homeless woman with the mother of all shopping carts.

It had always been a mystery how he had changed his own bed sheets because he could only sleep on half of the bed at any given time. I figured he had pulled the sheets off just like the magicians did on television when they removed a table cloth with one daring swipe. The table was always set, replete with fine china, crystal and silver candlesticks and nothing was ever disturbed. We did the sheet exchange and I didn't ask. "Gimme the sheets, take these and be sure to shut the door," I ordered.

When Brian turned twenty-two, he arrived home one day and announced that he had joined the Marines. He said he'd wait till dad got home to break the news. "No," I answered, "call now while he's at work. If he has a stroke," I reasoned, "he can go to the emergency room from there. I won't get billed for Flight for Life with a hospital right near his workplace."

Our son left for bootcamp and we wondered what the drill sergeants would do with "Major Chaos." "He'll never survive," my husband lamented while waiting six weeks for his blood pressure to stabilize. I promised myself I'd clear the room then do the serious worrying.

I got the snow shovel, huge cardboard boxes and attacked a room whose carpet color I couldn't recall. When our son finally phoned home from boot camp he warily inquired, "you didn't move anything in my room did you?" "Naw" I answered, "not a thing."

I figure I had swelled Goodwill's inventory by half that year. Our trash collector had been convinced we were moving for the better part of three weeks and wanted his bill settled. The family dog, a huge old pointer, had sat and stared at the diminishing cave being reconfigured before him. At ninety-seven pounds, Dundee had treated the room as a "no travel zone." He'd never found a navigable path in there.

Amazingly our son completed boot camp and visited my mother in Northern California before returning home. She called me in near hysteria when he'd gone. He had made his bed, folded the blankets, the laundry, the newspapers, the towels and had emptied the dishwasher. "No Ma, he hasn't been brainwashed. He's okay, really, don't worry."

He never asked who cleaned his room and I never explained. Something had to give, I guess, and it wasn't the Marines. Later he had visited a friend's new apartment and was astonished at the mess! In the end Ann Landers and the Marines had won. I wonder what they could do with a husband............