Roy Rogers used to have a horse named “Trigger.” Once I
became aware enough I wondered at that, I mean, after all, a trigger is
something that starts things. Triggers set things in motion. It would seem that
the horse is the motion, not the cause, eh? But that’s not what I was thinking about
today.
Many years ago when I was trapped in a declining wage spiral
with every job I got, I became a housewife. It was costing more to keep the
kids in daycare than I was making so I just stayed home. I made a deal with my
wife over this after the first couple weeks. She became critical of the way I
did things. She had seven different ‘loads’ of laundry and disliked my simpler
four—light, dark, red and impossible (those things of hers I would not wash due
to the consequences of destruction thereof). She did not approve of using the
shop vac, a bucket of soapy water and a brush on a broom handle for spot
removal on carpets. She did not think Pledge sprayed on dustrags and used as
skates for the kids constituted polishing wood floors. She did not feel that
leaving the vacuum plugged in and standing in the middle of the entryway
encouraged the kids to vacuum floors. I however, being enlightened, embraced
all these things. We agreed that as long as she was satisfied with the results,
I could do things my own way. This agreement served well over many years.
While all this is doubtless of great interest and somewhat
germane, that’s not what I wanted to talk about either. While playing on the
computer and watching “Two Fat Ladies” on the Cooking Channel, I ran out of
coffee. So I creaked up to get another cup and my naked feet encountered an
eclectic mixture of crumbs, gravel, dog hair, dead juniper gnats and God knows
what else. So, what did I do? I got my coffee and sat back down of course. But
that crunchy crap under my feet did trigger my grunge tolerance level. So mere
days later I gave up on sitting in the great room calling the vacuum to come
downstairs and operate on its own, went upstairs, got it and vacuumed. The
great room. Not that much grunge elsewhere, you know?
Many years after I first became a housewife and after many
yelling matches in which I inevitably came off second I realized that this was
the problem. Much like pain tolerance inverted, men have much higher Dirt/Grunge/Filth
tolerance than women. You would think that once I realized this, I would, in
the interest of peace, harmony, the general good and possible sexual favors establish
the exact point at which my wife’s D/G/F tolerance trigger was tripped. So one
would think indeed, but you are overlooking a superior trigger present usually
only in males: the laziness trigger. This trigger trips when inertia of laying about
on the couch is greater than the rewards the perceived work is likely to
generate. In other words, lazy always wins.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, I was not a
househusband or Mr. Mom. I was a housewife—if I was to do the work, I would
have the title.
