One day, you're dreaming about all the money you're gonna have, and the nice car you're going to drive because you're living with your friends, and the mortgage payment, split 5 ways, is only $400 bucks each.
The next day, you're dreaming about marrying someone. You're dreaming about the house you are going to buy. The car has come down in price. Maybe you're not buying as much stuff (unless you have a great wife like mine, who understands that it's the expensive things in life that keep me occupied).
We laugh about it. My friends tease me about it. But it happens to 98% of us. We all want to settle down.
We all want hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
We all want to be slaves to our possessions.
An interesting observation I made to my wife the other day was that we all seem to fall into gender roles. Not the big things, necessarily. Like cooking, or cleaning. (I love to cook... I don't mind vacuuming). But the little things.
Like taking out the trash.
Every man in TV history is burdened with taking out the trash. Even Sgt. Murtaugh, of Lethal Weapon fame, harbors the responsibility of the trash taking. So one might assume that these gender roles are ingrained in our minds by the media. Men take out the trash.
But my wife didn't grow up watching Family Matters or Step by Step or Growing Pains. She didn't have cable. She can't watch movies like Lethal Weapon. Her favorite movies are period pieces, there was no trash, the servants made it disappear.
Yet, there are gender roles, because of what she grew up with watching. Her parents.
Yet, like the idea of settling down and putting yourself into ambition crippling debt, it's written deeply in to her soul.
"Ron will take out the trash."
4 comments:
Damn right men should take out the trash. Although, if we didn't have to tell you guys to do it every time, or if we just did it ourselves, it would get done when it really should be done, and not when it's overflowing.
I disagree...it is not inevitable. I don't want to settle down. Now what of your theory?!
I say, "Wait, you're young yet."
here's my theory on guys' roles: anything gross or yucky falls into the guy has to do it - in my house that includes taking out the trash, cleaning up cat vomit, cleaning out the cat litter, bug killing or humane removal, anything car related in fact anything mechanical or technical; on the odd day cooking falls into the gross and yucky category and on those days that gets relegated to his job!
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