While taking a break from spring cleaning (by which I mean sitting on the floor in a light existential spiral surrounded by piles labeled keep, donate, and why do I own this), I happened to look up at my living room wall.

Not glance.

Look.

And there it was.

A plastic child-protector still plugged into the electrical outlet.

A tiny white sentinel guarding against toddler curiosity.

My son is seventeen years old.

Seventeen.
He is applying to colleges.
He has been accepted to thirteen.
He writes essays about his future and uses words like trajectory and opportunity and campus culture.

And yet.

Apparently, I am still protecting him from sticking a fork into the wall.

Now, I had a few immediate thoughts.

First:
Have I just been too lazy to remove it?

Second:
Or did I subconsciously decide that parenting is less about milestones and more about hedging bets?

Because honestly, who among us hasn’t thought, Well,  just in case?

Maybe I left them there out of habit. Maybe out of nostalgia.
Maybe because one day you’re baby-proofing the house and the next day you’re googling FAFSA deadlines and you never actually get a ceremony where someone comes in and says,

“Congratulations. You may now remove the outlet caps. Your child is statistically unlikely to electrocute himself.”

Parenting doesn’t end. It just updates.

Also, in my defense, I do have three dogs.

And while none of them have expressed interest in electrical experimentation, I feel like the bar for canine decision-making is not especially high. So really, I’m not negligent.

I’m proactive.

This is not laziness.

This is multispecies safety planning.

Still, there’s something oddly emotional about that little plastic plug.

Because it’s proof of how quietly time passes.

You don’t notice it while you’re packing lunches, tying shoes, checking homework, reminding them to shower, reminding them again to shower, reminding them that deodorant exists.

But one day you look up and the house is full of artifacts from earlier chapters.

Outlet caps.
Old artwork.
Random LEGO pieces that could legally qualify as caltrops.

And you realize that the protections stay long after the dangers change.

We stop guarding against sharp corners and start guarding against disappointment.
We stop worrying about electrical outlets and start worrying about whether they’ll find their people, their path, their place in the world.

But sometimes the old protections remain.

Because maybe they were never really about safety.

Maybe they were about love.

Or maybe I just don’t want to move the couch to remove them.

Honestly, both can be true.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be continuing my spring cleaning, emotionally processing outlet covers, and trying to remember where I put the zebra head. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, maybe that’s good. Just kidding. I lost a zebra head last week and still can’t find it.

Oh, also, I left the childproof cap in the socket. ‘Cause, why not?