The Real in Reality TV

Mum would like you to all know that when I wrote about cleaning my parents’ house on this post, I was specifically talking about my belongings that are taking up space at my parents’ house. According to Mum, my wording made it seem like she needed to be on the A&E show Hoarders. I regret this insinuation.

I’ve recently started watching Hoarders on Monday nights. This week’s was a doozy because the woman needed to touch everything before throwing it away. And her daughter was the spitting image of me, willing to throw everything away without even opening the bag to see what was inside. But that’s not how they roll on Hoarders because they don’t want to break the fragile mental psyche of the participants.

I asked Katie if she was watching Hoarders, and she said “No, it hits too close to home.” Because Katie couldn’t locate her college diploma this week. She thought it was perhaps in her closet and had to climb in there and step on a VCR while searching.

When I offered to help her clean her room, she shrieked “You will throw away all my fortunes!”

Those are fortune cookie fortunes, that she has collected since her first Chinese take-out dinner.