Men…
1.
The
first sound you hear upon opening the front door:
Story:
After coming home from a very long day is the vacuum running downstairs.
Second clue, the vacuum is set to the lowest height setting and you can
smell the burning rubber vacuum belt all the way upstairs.
Reasoning:
This doesn’t mean he is helping with the housework, this simply means
he knows you’ve had a very long day and don’t have the time for his
bull-shit; he is trying to clean up the really screwed up mess he made
downstairs before you get home! He
surmises you will never again ask him to vacuum again.
Early childhood taught him that if you screw up efforts to make it look
like you were really trying to do well, goes a long way to heightened degrees of
consideration in the face of adversity. After
all, how can your wife scold you for screwing up trying to do something nice for
them?
2.
The
scariest thing you have ever seen:
Story:
You unlock the front door to enter your house after a particularly hard
day at the office. Your husband or
boyfriend is standing there to greet you, and he has on a really dirty apron
with burn marks around the hem and slight whiffs of smoke rising from the
threads! His hand is bandaged and
his hair has some sort of white material on it which looks like lard.
Reasoning:
Don’t be fooled by this cheap ploy; he does not like to cook.
Bad dog, bad dog! He figures
after this, you will look back on this day and understand later in the marriage
when you can’t get him to do anything in the kitchen.
Not even dishes, for fear of him lapsing into destructive memories and
visions of the fire the day he tried to cook something nice for you and surprise
you with a ‘Bon Appetite’ moment. He
jokingly says asking him to help do dishes may put him over the edge.
In the past he has become sullen and quiet when approached about kitchen
chores. You have noticed he becomes
introverted and his eyes well-up every time he sees or gets close to the stove.
He recants visions of flames and flying grease to you, as if demonized.
You feel asking him to help in the kitchen may push him too much.
You decide you love him for his efforts and never ask him to help in the
kitchen again; furthermore, because of that same love, you perceive asking
anything of him may be construed as mental cruelty.
He loves you!
3.
Story:
Be ready and always vigilant for the tried and true scam of taking two of your
favorite sweaters or blouses, throwing them into the washer, set the machine on
hot-wash-Hot rinse, regular wash. Then
throwing in two cups bleach and one cup soap.
After the regular spin cycle, he takes what's left of them and puts them
into the dryer on regular (long cycle), Hot Dry!
They come out spotted like Dalmatians, and the size of postage stamps!
Haaaaaa!
Reasoning: He figures
you’ll be mad for a couple of days, but you really can’t say anything since
‘he was just trying to give you more free time to rest and lounge by the
pool’. In actuality he figures
it’s worth it. You will eventually
simmer down and put down the knife. An
indication of this is when you let the dog back in and you let the children out
of their rooms. You will never ask
him to do laundry again! Once again,
how can you get mad when he was trying to do something nice for his loving
wife or girlfriend?
4.
Night walker:
Story: Always buy two
cartons of milk. Put yours in the
back of the shelf. He will always
reach for the one in the front when he is walking around half naked, half awake,
and farting in the middle of the night thinking no one can hear him.
Every night you are awakened by what you fear to be an intruder in the
darkness; when in fact it’s him. He goes to the fridge, gets the carton of
milk, opens it and turns it up with the spout in his mouth to drink all he wants
of the cool beverage. The uncouth
bastard thinks he is in his own little world.
Reasoning:
He figures if he doesn’t dirty a glass you will never know he drank all
the milk. With your carton hidden
safely in the back of the shelf, you can be assured his doggie/beer breath has
not tainted the moo juice for your diet, breakfast cereal.
When you buy a new carton, simply move your dated, ‘turning’ milk
carton to the front for the pig of your dreams while you enjoy fresh milk during
the week.
5.
Paper boy:
Story: Your plan is to
leave paper towels on a spool in plain view as a tool to train the brute to
clean up after himself. In reality
the new roll will remain as it is until it petrifies!
His constant fear is that if he touches it, or even lets you see him look
in that direction, he will have no excuse for leaving a mess on the counter.
A sure sign of this condition is if while cooking in the kitchen, you
accidentally bump him and oblivious to all physics laws of matter he spins and
lands facing the opposite direction as the roll of paper towels and as an added
measure, he acts as if hitting a stone wall when two feet from the soft roll of
Bounty. It’s OK; garner what you can from the incident.
You already think him a pig and have one more derogatory remark to nail
him with during those sweet relationship misunderstandings.
However, be forewarned, for the life of the relationship he can feign
ignorance when questioned about small messes left for others to clean up.
It is in his inherent makeup to lie or spout absurd phrases to justify
laziness. A few of those may be;
‘I thought you needed those’ or ‘I have been worried about the environment
lately and I thought by waiting until the mess was really bad I was helping save
the dolphins’. A classic is, “by
the time I thought the mess should be cleaned up, you had just-got-there ahead
of me! I’m sorry; I’ll try to do
better. Those poor dolphins!
As ridiculous as it sounds, this approach leaves him an ‘open-ended’
alibi for those days when the place looks like a pig pen!
Reasoning
#1: This approach will make you
realize you are just cluttering up the counter, and make you put the roll under
the sink and save it for ‘cleaning day’ and use it yourself.
Reasoning
#2: He thinks you will thank him for all the money you are
saving, overlook his shortcomings, and
love him even more for his kind heart and loving manner when it comes to saving
the earth.
6.
Wallet money:
Story: Your plan is to
leave just enough gas in the car so he can get to the gas station when you send
him to the store for something. Why
spend your money all the time to fill the tank?
After all doesn’t he use the car too!
Note: For this scam to work,
always make sure there is money in his wallet to pay for the gas you know he
will need, but doesn’t know it yet.
Reasoning:
Back off!!! He knows this ploy! He
will call you on the phone pretending he has run out of gas, and yell and scream
at you for not warning him. He will
make it ‘your fault’ for letting the tank go empty and not telling him!
He will say something like ‘why didn’t you just say something, I
would have filled it?’ You bite
your lip when you hear that tripe coming over the phone and swear you would have
punched him in the mouth for trying to con you.
You know damn well he never would have filled the tank on his own.
You find yourself mentally about to un-load on him, but hold your temper;
because you know deep down, you tried to con him to spend his money to fill the
fuel tank on your car. You know deep
down you really didn’t need anything at the store and he is sitting somewhere
in the pouring rain by the side of the road because of you.
He knows he has you and you can hear the condescending tone in his voice,
even though he is pretending to ’cool down’.
He has you and you are caught. Your
little attempt at reverse psychology didn’t work.
All the while he is sitting in a gas station having a beer after putting
a few dollars in the tank and spending the rest on Lotto tickets.
He knows you can’t see him enjoying himself; so he lays-it-on thick.
Sneezing, coughing, lips shaking while he tries to talk, you know, making
you feel like shit! You envision him stranded in the pouring rain, abandoned by
the side of the road, wild creatures and dark shadows moving in the bushes and
woods near the stranded car! You
know, he can’t even start the car to stay warm and dry, windows fogging up.
You really feel terrible that you did that to someone; who, with all his
faults, loves you dearly. You feel
sorry for him when he gets home from that phony errand you sent him on, soaking
wet, miserable, and coughing. As
the con artist walks in the
door, dripping with ’you owe me big time’ you hear “honey, don’t worry
about it, I love you” with that same condescending
smile on his face he had when he caught you eating that big piece of chocolate
cake late one night. You have
that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when he tells you he put in his
last ‘couple-a-bucks’, and the bastard at the gas station wouldn’t let him
call you to tell you not to worry, everything was OK.
For an instant you think you smell beer on his breath, but you shrug it
off. How can that be, he had no
money to even call me so I wouldn’t worry?
He tells you he would have put in more gas but he didn’t have anymore
money. An obvious ploy to get beer
money, how can you say no? After
all, you sent him out in the rain to get gas in your car, who’s worse?
Reasoning:
How much is a ‘couple-a-bucks’? He
has you by the you-know-what's! He
knows you don’t know how much he put in the tank, but you know he didn’t
fill it! You know he ‘went out’
because he loves you. You give him a
five—’Oh, man, can you just give me what I put in the tank” he whines.
You give him a ten and he says ‘thanks a lot’ for making me beg’,
and gives you that wry smile he uses when he’s gloating.
You know you were ripped off, but prove it!
Instead of sulking, it’s true love; you feel like ripping his smug face
off, but instead, ‘here honey, let me help you with your wet clothes’.
Ahaaa, true love. There’s that smell again…
Continued…RJ