11-14-02 Side Streets, Kimra Traynor Herb
Dr. Phil and Appreciation
By Kimra Traynor Herb
IPS Features
The other day, Dr. Phil began his show with a little segment where he
switched places with his wife for one day. The audience was titillated as he
grocery shopped with as much expertise as a three year old, baked a cake which
slid on the cake pan, and blew off vacuuming saying, "You can't tell if I
did the whole room." The focus of his show that particular day was what
happened when men don't appreciate all the hard work that womenfolk do."
Pu-leez. To begin with, I was less than amused that Dr. Phil had been married
twenty some odd years and had NEVER? gone grocery shopping before without his
wife? But before I cast any stones in Dr. Phil's direction; lo and behold, out
trotted a couple of other clods who dismissed dishwashing as "woman's
work" and noted that they had "more important things to do with their
time." You know. Man things. When pinned down, they couldn't EXACTLY
specify what kind of man things, but man things beat out woman things, like
dishes, any day of the week.
Of course the audience was boo-ing up a storm to these guys, and their
wives were sobbing in their chairs, claiming they couldn't wait for the
inevitable divorce which was just around the corner due to their husband's bad
behavior. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
How can a marriage go 10, 20, 25 years and all of a sudden a woman
realizes, "Hey, I am doing all the dirty work here!" My marriage
didn't go 10 days before it became apparent that SOMEBODY was going to have to
cook some meals, clean some floors, scrub some toilets and that SOMEBODY wasn't
going to be ME......necessarily. I think that the first time our
apartment, in all of its green shag carpeted glory, reached the threshold of
pain (and believe me, when a 20 year old and a 22 year old share a room roughly
the size of a large cardboard box for more than a week, things are bound to get
ugly quick), I just said, "Honey, you clean the kitchen, I'll do the
bathroom, we'll hit the living room together and then we'll go get some
groceries." And it goes completely without saying that my husband did a
much better job on his tasks than I did.
There are a lot of books about training your child. You can find a book
on how to raise your child to be anything from A-Z. As long as you are willing
to plunk down $29.95, you can read about raising a musical child, a productive
child, how to get your child to succeed in math.... anything. Somebody needs to
write a book for the young couple, about to be married, which outlines the laws
of the home which are, as follows: Anyone who really wants to eat will learn how
to cook; anyone who is bothered by dirty dishes will learn how to do them his or
herself; anyone who thinks the house is a filthy hole will do something about
it. This philosophy has brought pretty much a state of harmony to my marriage.
My husband knows that if I am sitting in the kitchen, helping my 13 year old
write a paper and it is five o'clock, p.m., and his stomach is growling; he
needs to take the initiative to open the refrigerator door and throw something
together so that the family can eat. Likewise, I realize that if he has two
soccer practices that evening, has to pick up our oldest son from band, and
attend a soccer board meeting, I need to have something ready the SECOND he gets
home from work so that there is a small chance my hubby can stuff a morsel down
his mouth before he is out the door for a long while.
My little guy, who is six, is starting to learn the way things work
around here. The other day, he looked under a chair in the living room where a
big tumbleweed of pet hair had accumulated. "MOM!" He screamed,
pointing. "I think it is time you did some cleaning!"
I walked into the room and looked, nonplused at the mass of fur. I
headed into the laundry room, got the vacuum, and turned it over to my son.
"There you go," I told him, "Knock yourself out."
"You want ME to clean the floor?" He asked, dumbfounded.
"But that's Mommy work!"
I just smiled at him and told him that if the fur REALLY bothered him,
HE would vacuum it away, and it would be HIS work. If not, someone else would be
disgusted enough to clean it, but that someone might or might not be me.
"Right now," I replied. "I think it can go another day."
My son sighed and cleaned the floor, but I think he realized that around
this joint, if you don't like the way things are going; you had better be ready
to do something about it yourself. The only way an audience is going to get a
good chuckle out of any switcheroo at our home is if I attempt to solve an
engineering crisis or my husband attempts to play my flute. Hey.... some jobs
are just made for one person.
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