Messy Boys
Danger: Rant Ahead. If you don’t want to listen to me rant and rave, try scrolling down to yesterday’s post. This one is bad-tempered and PMS-cranky.
Consider yourself warned.
Why are boys so messy? Ever grown man I’ve ever lived with (and by “grown” I mean “older than 18, no matter how emotionally immature”) has been as messy as a frickin’ toddler. (Except my stepdad, but his neatness is a form of messiness in and of itself.) I have no fewer than three careers–writing full-time, training a student, and picking up after everyone in the house. The kids I can excuse because well, they’re kids. The Teen I can set to tidying up and usually some approximation of order will result. But the DHM? Messy as any man I’ve ever lived with. I should be paid for picking up after him and the kids when I could be writing. Of course, since motherhood is deemed a sacred thing by American government, petty considerations like paying mums for producing productive consumers don’t enter into it.
It seems sacrilegious to expect some financial renumeration for the backbreaking 24-7 labor that is motherhood, doesn’t it? We have the cult of the self-sacrificing mother so deeply embedded in our culture that we are blind to the very real costs of it. Take, for example, Social Security. If you choose to stay home with your kids, you miss out on years of paying into Social Security and your benefits suffer. If you don’t stay home with your kids, you’re a Bad Mother and Part of the Crime Problem. Moms can’t win. If they stay home they are financially blackmailed, often staying in abusive or unsatisfying relationships for the sake of financially supporting their children. If they go back to work they are penalized for maternity leave or for the emergencies that arise when Little People enter your life. This penalty is also financial, as you’re not as likely to be promoted if you don’t put in the overtime that is fast becoming a mark of our culture.
Which is the issue of businesses overworking the employees they have rather than hiring a few more people so the work is spread around and people can have real lives. I have not decided if this is an outgrowth of the permanent crisis footing most businesses function on, or if it is an outgrowth of the drive to the bottom line chipping away at decent employee treatment in the mistaken belief that one can do so and one’s business will not suffer.
But that’s a different rant for a different day. My rant for today is: why do grown men drop things on the floor as soon as they’ve stopped playing with them, just like the Little Prince did when he was two? I swear to high heaven my son will not behave so. A little bit of mess is okay, it keeps a house healthy. But creating so much chaos your poor wife/mother/girlfriend can barely manage to get the house hoovered once a week and is spending more time doing dishes and laundry than working for a pay? Not so good.
And boys like to pretend they’re no good at cleaning up, doing a halfass job at kitchen cleaning, for example, in the mistaken hope that you’ll get tired of them doing it so poorly and will take the job back or finish it up for them, spending at least three times the time necessary to do it yourself.
1. Ask Boy Person to do dishes.
2. Remind Boy Person to do dishes.
3. Demand Boy Person do dishes.
4. Boy Person does first half of job slowly and gets distracted.
5. Demand Boy Person finish job.
6. Boy Person does further quarter of job and calls it good.
7. Think longingly of strangling Boy Person.
8. Finally either a. finish job yourself or b. stand over Boy Person with whip, losing even more time because you have to explain where to put each cup or how to wipe down the counters.
Total time: 3 hours
Versus just doing it oneself, total time 15 minutes.
Sneaky little buggers, aren’t they?
I swear I will move to a Scandinavian country where they have started paying motherhood benefits and have a decent pension plan. Snow nine-tenths of the year will be a small price to pay.
Now granted, the DHM is good at making pancakes and taking the kids to kendo, not to mention generally keeping the cars running and various other wonderful Dear Husband Muffin things. I just wish he’d toss his dirty clothes vaguely where the laundry hamper has sat for five years of us living in this house. Or toss them in some other regular place so I could move the laundry hamper there to catch them, I am not picky. And I wouldn’t say no to dirty dishes not being left in the living room, too. That’d be nice.
The Selkie swears it is genetic on the part of Boy People, that they are not wired like us normal, rational people with two big X chromosomes. (Depending on her mood, she might also swear that the damage that makes the Y chromosome shorter than the X is to blame.) I would be willing to agree if not for the armed forces and their obsessive neatness in barracks and offices. If boys can be neat in the Army, they can be a little neater at home.
Several women I’ve ranted about this with have said, “It’s their mothers’ fault. Boys are waited on hand and foot until they leave home.” While this may be true for Italian men I have difficulty believing it’s world-wide. You’d think mums would train their sons to at least not leave their dirty knickers lying about, so the poor wives/girlfriends who have to deal with them in adulthood won’t suffer so much. Viva feminism! Teach your son to do his own bloody laundry and pick up his dirty dishes!
As a ringing battle cry, I suppose it does lack a certain something.
Yes, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and compounded the error by actually getting out of bed. Yes, I need more coffee before I am fully human. Yes, I am PMSing.
No, I don’t think I’m wrong despite all that. 
Now I think I should go get Danny Valentine in more trouble, since I’m in just the mood to do so.
The dishes can wait.
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March 14th, 2007 at 7:50 am
My theory (similar the the Selkie’s) is that the y-chromosome includes a short-circuit in “task” programming. for those who suffer from this condition, a task is complete when the nail is hammered, the sock is removed from the foot, the bill is removed from the envelope, or the last bite of sandwich is eaten, which means that the hammer, the sock, both the bill and the envelope, and the plate will sit where the task was completed.
non-y-chomosome people have complete task programming, which means that a task includes the hammer going back in the tool box, the sock in the hamper, the bill in the to-be-paid file, the envelope in the trash, and the plate in the dishwasher.
in the military, cleaning is a task in itself (and therefore less likely to suffer from interrupt), enforced by reformed y-chromosome people who have the power to make things happen.
some “task interrupt” sufferers can be trained, although sometimes the training is painful for all concerned.
I’m lucky in that generally at our house the task-interrupt applies mostly to tools & supplies, rather than to laundry and dishes. and if I’m patient, those thing eventually end up back where they belong. of course, we have no children we need to set a good example for, and cats who will haul off kitten-portable things as toys (which has tended to reduce the length of time things sit in one place).
maybe the powers that be should direct some of their gene-therapy investigations to solving this problem??