By Paul Peavy
In a scientific survey of exactly four couples I have come across the answer to one of life's great questions; what is the difference between men and women? For a while I believed it was that women have ESP and men are perfectly happy just having their ESPN. Then I married a woman who loves football just as much as I do and life has been blissful ever since. Until that is “my wife told me the little pile of stuff beside my bed was out of control. Yes, I had to clean up this mess or else. Now as I put this back into a neat little stack I counted one section of the newspaper, two letters, three of my three year-olds books, four library books, and old Sports Illustrated. With this she had nicknamed my side of the bed 'The Swamp!” This little mess had driven my normally very tolerant, very loving, and very understanding wife absolutely bonkers for two weeks. I took exactly one and a half minutes and put my daughter's books in her basket, threw away the newspaper, the Sports Illustrated, and letters and then put the other stuff in a neat little stack.
Excuse the flow of this article but she just interrupted me to tell me her new favorite ad was in a magazine she was browsing through. It was an ad where they have one page with a junky closet and the next page has it magically cleaned with the advertised organizers. Trust me this would not make the top 2,500 of guy ads. So now you're starting to catch on. The deal is the extra messtosterone that men have that allows them to enjoy life and wallow (pig slop).
My belief that perhaps this is an innate difference was influenced when my two year old girl told me as we pulled into the driveway, and I quote, “Daddy, when you gonna mow the yard for us. It's nasty”. If I had a boy I'm thoroughly convinced he would have said something like, 'The yard is looking cool Dad, can we play Tarzan?'
When we first got married my wife told me, “There is nothing sexier than a man doing yard work!” I feel for that the first six months of our marriage. Then I decided to test her theory and gave her an astroturf bedspread for her birthday.
The other thing that has convinced me that neatness is a gender specific gene is that men who have this tendency are considered to have some kind of illness or personality problem. Men who are a little too interested in making sure their hands are always clean, their bathroom towels are always neat, and keeping their kitchen floors sparkling clean are diagnosed as having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. If a guy is interested in keeping his desk just so and gets upset with his secretary when she has misplaced something, he is diagnosed as having a type A personality. If he is overly concerned with everything in his personal life being his way and the house being immaculate and spotless, his wife calls him a control freak.
Another specific point is the making up of the bed that is going to be messed up that night. I have actually heard several women say, “Well, what if I died and someone had to come into my house? What if my bed wasn't made up?” Well my basic male response was, “You would be dead, that's what.” Call me grandiose, but I am shooting for a little more in my obituary than “Paul Peavy, 1959-2000, His Bed Was Made Up.”
Another response that I hear from women is this, “Well, what if someone broke into my house and saw that I did not make up my bed.” I guess these women have had more exposure to the talk on the street than I have. I'm sure the guy who buys stolen jewelry says, “Well, was the bed made?” The thief would then hang his head shamefully and mutter, “No sir”. Then the buyer would say, “Well, you know I can't buy jewelry from slobs like that.” Then shame of all shame, you're house gets blacklisted by all of the crooks in town.
This of course contributes to the guy logic that if you don't clean up, you are more likely to have a more fulfilled life and you are less likely to have you're house broken into. So please understand, it's not that we are lazy, we are just looking out for the welfare of the family (and the wallow).