Why do women have this unreasoning stereotype concerning men? Whenever they get together and start snickering and gesturing punctuated by sharp barks of laughter followed by all them glancing knowingly your way then you know they’re discussing TV remote control usage or messy diapers or some such topic that illustrate men’s deficiencies. I think this is grossly unfair. It’s particularly unfair since we try our best to help out by relieving them of some of their burdensome household chores.

Take children and diapers for example. For some reason my wife was reluctant to entrust the care of our daughter me. I’m not sure why. As near as I could make out it was something about not cleaning diapers, clothes, bibs and things or some such nonsense when she returned from work. Her accusations are a little garbled (that frequently happens when she swallows her words) so I couldn’t quite catch the entire meaning but I got the impression that, as a man, I was utterly incapable of caring for our infant. All I can say to this is,

“It wasn’t my fault!” It could have happened to anybody. In fact you could almost say it was her fault.

I’d stayed home to work on my thesis and care for our daughter while my wife went off to work. My wife’s job was a godsend and we weren’t about to jeopardize it. While we didn’t have much money it was enough to allow us to move from the old world war II housing we’d been living in (and that’s a story for another time) to the old original farmhouse for the area (another story that perhaps I’ll relate someday).

Anyway, there I was working diligently on my thesis while keeping a watchful eye on our daughter when lunch time caught up with us. Being a responsible parent I fed our daughter first then fixed my own lunch which consisted of heating up some left over stew from the previous evening. Now my wife makes a delicious stew filled with herbs, spices and other tasty substances but on this day I was in a bit of a hurry so I just gulped the meal down and set back to work. That was my first mistake.

It felt like something was caught in my throat but I couldn’t get it out or even see anything when I looked. Briefly I wondered if somehow a bone had snuck into the stew but that was unlikely as my wife is very careful about these things. Still the feeling persisted and grew to the point that I felt I was starting to gag.

It was then that my daughter started fussing. Trying to keep from throwing up I figured out that her diaper needed changing and changed it. Naturally I was in a hurry. I needed help before I choked to death! So I hurriedly changed the diaper, left the old diaper soaking in the toilet (a clear case of responsibility under the circumstances regardless of what my wife says) and hastily threw on some clothes (Since I wasn’t planning to go anywhere I hadn’t bothered getting dressed.). Then I set off for the doctor with my daughter bundled under one arm.

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Tags: family, Humor

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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