Perspectives

When there are no Rockies games on, I don't listen to the radio much at home. (I sometimes turn on the Beverly Hillbillies in the background while I do my chores, though -- nothing like doing laundry with some good banjo music in the background, eh?) But I always have the radio on in the car.

I try to mix it up: Classic Rock, Big Band Swing, Jazz (no, that does NOT include Kenny G), and every now and then I'll make an attempt to listen to the head-banging stuff that my kid likes. Some is dreck, of course, but some of it's not too bad. Hey, I know how this works; after all, when I was his age, the same stations that played BTO also featured The Captain and Tennile. But sometimes, it seems like every station is playing the same Bruce Hornsby/Jackson Browne interchangeable moan-fest, and I'll switch over to a talk station.

I can't take a steady diet of that, either. The political programs just make me upset, and I can only stand so much of NPR's constant whining about how I am personally responsible for the impending death of the planet. And my tolerance threshold for Broncos chat isn't all that high, either. But occasionally there's an interview with a Tuvan Throat Singer, a Bob Einstein tribute, or a documentary about Spam.

The other day while I was driving to swim practice, I heard a discussion about why women get frustrated with men. The show's host was a woman, as was the phone-in "Expert" discussing the topic. The host said that the biggest problem was that men seem to be lazy, since they don't do the expect volume of work around the house. "Oh no, they're not lazy," the expert replied. "They simply are not good at recognizing what needs to be done." She went on explain that women are inherently better at constantly keeping their mind focused on their to-do list, while men think about...other stuff. But that doesn't mean that males are worthless -- if you tell them specifically what you want them to do, they'll generally comply. Just don't expect them to see the big picture regarding chores, because they aren't wired to spot and catalog all the myriad necessary tasks that women can naturally visualize.

The discussion then turned toward how women should feel a bit sorry for these pitiful creatures; after all, how horrible would it be to go through life without the innate ability to instinctively grasp the magnitude of household entropy?

Hmmm. I wonder if there might not be another explanation for this chore-spotting gap?

I mentioned this dilemma to my son, who immediately offered another viewpoint. "Might it be," he said, "that men do indeed have that same ability to recognize uncompleted tasks, but have an altogether different interpretation of 'what needs to be done'"? The women on the radio assumed that there could be NO discussion on whether chores need to be done...of course they do! But from a teenager's perspective, hardly anything ever needs to ever be done at all.

Vacuuming? Complete waste of time. Doing dishes? Well, you caused that problem by not eating at McDonalds, so don't blame me. Replacing a burnt-out light bulb? Hey, it's better for the environment if we just lived in the dark, anyway.

And of course, if you try to reason with a boy that age, he'll have an answer for everything. If you explain that dirt wears down the carpet, he'll tell you to just buy new carpet every few years. If you explain that carpet can be expensive, he'll tell you to get a better-paying job. If you explain that unnecessary carpet replacement damages the environment by adding to landfills and requiring additional resource usage to manufacture new rugs, he'll suggest that you just learn to live on a dirt floor. After all, it was good enough for Jesus and Abe Lincoln and Jimmy Carter, so why not us?

For some reason, that reminds me of the time my brother and I were kids, sharing a bedroom in the basement. One day, I noticed a couple of squashed bugs lying on the floor. When I asked my brother why he didn't clean up the carcasses, he explained that he was leaving them there "as a warning to the other bugs". So it's not that he didn't recognize that cleanup was a possibility; it was just that he interpreted the situation from a different viewpoint.

I'd suggest that there's room for multiple viewpoints. I personally like having clean dishes and unsoiled carpet. However, I may not feel a compelling need to vacuum every single day, nor do I feel the need to repaint the entire house if there's a nick in the baseboard. I think there's middle ground between "doing every possible thing that could be done" and "living like a European". The fact is that I'm perfectly content to let women use their hyper-perception to develop extensive to-do lists, but I'd suggest that they discuss these with their men, and consider whether certain chores might not be, um, negotiable. That's all I'm saying.

As B.B. King (or one of the other Kings...I don't remember which) once said: Can't we all just get along?