To fully understand what I am about to explain you need to understand that I am a Jewish, city-raised boy -- and what that means is that I’ve acquired certain traits.
I am not the standard manly-man: one who is good with tools, repairs things, knows how to fix a car. I am the very opposite. I have been raised to think, study -- leave all household tasks to the women and the hired help.
My wife is an engineer: very good at fixing things, possesses a vast amount of household tools -- and she loves to use them all.
All this is a preface to our daily realization that we have effectively reversed the common stereotype: I shop & cook & do the dishes, while she spot paints rust spots on the car, uses the computer to create spreadsheets and designs our web site.
The reversal of roles became complete in my mind when I was donning kitchen gloves in order to wash the dishes & she was venturing out into the cold to spot paint the rust pots.
I felt so sorry for her: she had to go out into the cold and do that nasty, difficult, time consuming, attention to-detail-task. I was staying in the warm inside, indulging myself in the mindless task of soaping & rinsing the dishes, and wiping off kitchen surfaces.
And then it hit me. We always think the task done by the other is the most odious task in the world. We’d hate to have to do that. But we can’t see that the other may have the same reaction. I’d hate to have to do what you have chosen to do.
My wife hates mindless tasks -- cleaning, cooking, shopping. She loves to work on her computer. She can happily sit there & research cameras for hours, for days, until she gets the best camera for the money. She can spend countless hours designing one page of a website.
I couldn’t stand doing that. She can’t tolerate what I don’t mind doing.
She has told me that time after time -- how she appreciates my cooking, my doing the dishes, and I keep saying to her how much I admire her ability to work at the computer. And she keeps saying, but that’s not work, that is having fun.
I can’t imagine that six hours in front of a computer screen can be something called having fun. She can’t imagine that I’d rather spend six hours shopping, writing, cooking, cleaning.
I feel sorry for her, genuinely sorry for her, that she must spot paint the car. She gains a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of confidence, when she keeps running, and relatively rust proof, a car we hope to keep for a long time.
She feels sorry for me that I must plan a meal, gather together the ingredients, cook, clean.
Admittedly we do value each other’s skills & compliment the other -- but the compliment is genuine, because we couldn’t dream of devoting so much time, so much effort, to performing a task that we know would drive us round the bend.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein