This is my Mother’s Day fantasy, one day as a dude.
Wake up , leave underwear and towel on floor with full confidence that a team of elves will return everything to order before I return home.
Decide between a blue shirt or another shade of blue shirt, choose blue. Run hands through hair and start day with an unwarranted confidence in my relative hotness. Who wouldn’t still want a piece of this?
Walk into kitchen, ask if we have cereal. Why look in the cupboard when my wife is right there and she knows the location of everything? What kind of cereal? Do we have milk? Where are the bowls? I really think she likes it when I am so dependent on her, it makes her feel valued and needed. It’s like I’m empowering her as a woman. Pat self on back for being modern feminist guy.
Check score of every game while watching the weather channel. Feel fully prepared for a day’s worth of dude small talk.
Hop into car that doesn’t have wipes, leftover Cheerios or dirty football socks. Drive off in ignorant bliss of carpool schedules or field trip permission slips.
Go to work, spend entire day speaking in declarative sentences. Tell people what I want without prefacing it with, “if you don’t mind” or “when you have the time”. Whenever something boring or clerical comes up, like working the collating printer, pretend I am just not smart enough to work those tricky things and wait for a really capable chick to take over. One always does, it’s like I’m letting them be powerful. Damn I’m a great guy.
Ask a client to dinner, tell myself it’s about business, but really it’s about making sure I get home after the kids have been fed and bathed. The routine just goes better if I’m not there, I don’t really know what they like to eat, how to wash their hair without making them cry or where their pajamas are. I mean, I’d like to help theoretically, I’m just not good at it so it’s like I’m helping by not being there.
Come home to quiet house. Wonder why my wife is still in the same clothes she was wearing when I left, Decide to be super helpful and empty the dishwasher without being asked. Whenever I do something without being asked I’m proving that I’m a 50% partner, a real modern guy. Put things away in random cupboards, if I do it too well I might be expected to do it more often. Wait to be praised for my self-starter can do modern guy attitude.
Spend rest of evening watching “the game”. Really, any game will do. It’s like an invisibility cloak, I can’t be bothered during said game and I can’t be expected to do anything, because, um, the game is on.
Think about getting frisky, but it seems like my wife is really tired. Decide tomorrow I’ll help more, ask her to make a list of everything I can do to help her, and to tell me how to do it, where to get all the things needed for the helping, double-check while helping that I’m doing it right, ask more questions and then ask her to reaffirm that I’ve done it properly and tell me what a great guy I am for being so helpful.
Sleep like baby.
