My struggle with DICKS

A harrowing journey

Last week, Shelly Mazzanoble came forward with her family’s fight against Ornamental Eye Syndrome (OES)- a genetic, incurable condition which renders its sufferers unable to see what is directly in front of them.

Her bravery inspired me to share the tale of my own terrifying illness. I’ve been suffering in silence for years, ashamed to come forward.

Today, I share my story with the world so that others like me will know they are not alone.

I am sorry to say that I am suffering from an aggressive form of DICKS:

Disappearing
Instantly
Clean
Kitchen
Scissors

DICKS is an incurable, progressive condition in which your sparkling clean, brand-new kitchen scissors to go missing the instant they appear in the drawer.

For most of my life, I had no problem finding my kitchen scissors. Any time I wanted to cut a pizza or expedite the opening of a bag of Double Stuf Oreos so I could eat them two at a time until my gullet exploded like a seagull eating styrofoam (don’t judge!), my kitchen scissors were there, in the knife block.

Unmoving and unchanging, they could always be counted on, much like my post-Oreo heartburn.

Made with Claude.

I confess: I took my kitchen scissor stability for granted.

Like they say, you never know what you have until it’s gone.

Although the origins of DICKS is not well understood, scientists believe that it begins with a small mass of cells in your abdomen, which multiple rapidly for 40 weeks and cause a variety of symptoms, such as nausea, fatigue, and a sudden desire to shop at Target.

Then, DICKS then remains latent for years, lulling you into a false sense of security before returning with a vengeance to wreak havoc— much like herpes, or Kid Rock.

And that’s what happened to me. Symptoms started to appear when my oldest daughter turned five. Cute and precocious, she unfortunately developed the nasty habit of arts and crafts.

Suddenly, I was finding scissors everywhere.

Scissors in the bathroom drawer.

Scissors under car seats.

Scissors tangled up in the doll’s hair mid-chop.

I tried not to panic.

Calm down, woman! I told myself. She’ll grow out of it! This is only a blip.

Indeed, most of these misplaced scissors were kid scissors, useful for nothing except sawing through construction paper, an activity that requires a shocking amount of physical strength.

My kitchen scissors were remained safely ensconced in the knife block.

What I didn’t know:

My daughter was just too short to reach them.

So I continued to live in ignorant bliss for years, assuming that I was safe from the worst symptoms of DICKS.

That is, until my second daughter also turned five and learned how to make hand-shaped paper snowflakes in school.

For parents of younger kids: the rumors are true. Paper snowflakes are THE gateway to much nastier things. Like marijuana to hard drugs, or Vanderpump Rules to the BravoVerse.

(This is why every parent should be enrolled into a CARE program when children enter pre-K: Craft Abuse Resistance Education. Slogan: just say no…to hot glue!)

Sadly, after getting exposed to paper snowflakes, it was only a matter of weeks until my younger daughter also succumbed to arts and crafts, just like her sister.

That’s when it happened.

Overnight, my kitchen scissors were never where I left them.

After taking them out of the dishwasher, I’d turn around and poof: gone. Sometimes they would turn up months later in the bottom of an old backpack, coated in slime and banana goo.

Other times, I never saw them again, despite my pleas for their return.

Created by Claude. In case you can’t tell, given that the descriptors include “racet” and hair-colored hair.

Once I even offered a reward for information about the missing scissors, but the only tip I received involved two sobbing girls blaming each other and screaming something about one of them biting the other in the butt. Not helpful.

For awhile, I kept fighting.

Every other month or so, I would buy a new 3-pack of scissors only to have them vanish into thin air.

I also donated to research to find the cause of DICKS. (Some believe that DICKS was actually created by the Big Scissor Industry and Jeff Bezos to boost demand for one-day scissor delivery, but sadly, this line of inquiry is badly underfunded. People are willing to donate to pediatric cancer research, but not DICKS? Sad).

To raise awareness, I begged Sarah Koenig to feature the scissors on Season 5 of Serial. After all, what could be a greater miscarriage of justice than a scissor-less middle-aged mom?

In a last ditch effort, I wrote to Liam Neeson and asked if he would star in a real-life version of Taken 4, in which a hardened CIA operative searches the Earth and takes no hostages in his quest to recover the missing kitchen scissors.

But all my attempts failed, and over time, hope dwindled. I now know that the only cure for DICKS is time. I have been told by former sufferers that symptoms will abate some day, a decade down the road, probably coinciding with around the time the kids leave for college (or for indentured servitude to AI overlords, as the case may be).

In the meantime, I’ll be alone, in my kitchen, tearing open a bag of Oreos.

With my teeth.