What slob is living in our family car?

I happened to look in the back seat of my car as I was rushing into the house to gather up the next set of children to run into town that evening.
What I saw stopped me in my tracks.
My car looked like someone was living in it -- and the resident was a slob.
A sweat shirt was dangling from the seat; at least one arm had been trampled repeatedly. A bowl with crusty red sauce was on the floor with a similarly crusty spoon sitting inside.
A tape measure -- the one I have spent weeks looking for -- was sitting up in the rear window along with a plastic cup, a CD, several candy wrappers and numerous bugs.
Papers were strewn across the back seat. Some appeared to be from Sunday school; some were daily school papers; and one, I was most certain as I peered through the window, was something I was supposed to have signed and returned -- I can only imagine when.
The floor was barely visible. An unbelievable number of tissues were lying everywhere. Looking at them, I tried to conceive who could have possibly used them all.
There were wrappers of every kind and fast-food containers of all sorts. I couldn't even remember eating at half the restaurants represented on the floor.
Clothes make carlook like a closet
Then one item caught my eye.
A pair of underwear was sticking out from under the seat. For this, I opened the door, picked up a stick and poked the undies. Holding them up in the air, dangling on the stick, I analyzed this find.
"Whose are these?" I wondered, not recognizing the Mutant Ninja Turtle design. "Why are they in my car?"
Then the more horrifying questions started invading my mind. "Why was a small child undressing in my car?" "Did I send a child home underpantless?" Then the most horrifying question: "Have I been driving around with a dirty pair of underwear in my vehicle?"
My disgust turned to relief as I found a pair of shorts and a shirt under the seat near where the underwear had been lying. Vaguely, I remembered -- a long time ago -- David's coming home from a friend's house in the outfit. I felt confident I was harboring clean clothes.
Or at least they had been clean, until somehow, some way they had been stuffed underneath the seat and forgotten.
Also forgotten were several pairs of my youngest child's socks. Unlike the underwear and shorts, these were not clean. For the life of me, I could not figure out why the child was taking his socks off in the car.
But even the socks were not as baffling as the ashtray and cup holders. My children are obsessed with stuffing these small receptacles full of anything and everything they can find.
Paper trash appearsto be glued together
There are the little round papers that wrap around straws; the occasional lollipop wrapper from the bank; perhaps a gum wrapper. All of this is stuck together, of course, with the gum from the wrapper and the sticky, bent lollipop stick and the pop drippings from the cup that was never removed from the holder.
But that doesn't stop my children!
They just keep stuffing -- tissues, papers, more wrappers.
The time they must spend stuffing every nook and cranny of the back seat ashtray, they could have the whole car washed and waxed!
Poking the wad with my stick, I knew it would take nothing less than a chisel and hammer to remove-- because, of course, gum and sticky lollipops aren't wrapped in the tissue they have stuffed in the container. Sticky stuff is always stuck to the sides.
My oldest son came outside looking for his wallet.
"It must have fallen in between the seats," I told him.
He looked at me like he wanted me to search for it.
After seeing the full ashtray and knowing what I found under the seat, I said, "There's no way I'm sticking my hand down there! Ask the guy who lives in this dump!"
gwhite@vindy.com