TASK #20: WOMB WITH A VIEW
“A single sentence will suffice for the modern man: he fornicated and he read the newspapers”. Albert Camus
Man, I had it easy growin’ up. I had a doting mom and a doting sister. Now I’m not saying that my mom was a push-over or unwilling to discipline me, it wasn’t that at all. She had a spanking stick she called “the Stick” that sat on the refrigerator and she wasn’t above poking my hand with her fork if I grabbed for a dinner roll without asking, and when I came home drunk when I was sixteen she didn’t smile and say “boys with be boys”, oh hell no, she let me puke and made me clean it up and grounded me for a month and never failed to bring up my poor behavior to whomever would listen.
But when it came time for me to leave home? I was virtually a big, unprepared baby. I wasn’t ready for college, let alone life after college. So what kind of girlfriends do you think I pursued?
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So it wasn’t like that–it was something more, well female-ish: she simply didn’t think that any man, especially her husband and male children, could handle anything that even vaguely resembled housework, and she–or my big sister–did it instead, i.e.cooking, bed-making, room straightening, laundry, difficult phone calling–I was “wombed” big time.
It’s all fine when you’re in her house. I never complained. Why should I? But when it came time for me to leave home? I was virtually a big, unprepared baby. I wasn’t ready for college, let alone life after college. So what kind of girlfriends do you think I pursued? Ones that were like my mother of course. They took care of everything for me!
And what a mistake that was, and it was exacerbated when I got older and starting liking women who didn’t want men that they had to take care of…
What the hell was I going to do?
I had to teach myself to be self-sufficient. I chose five activities–five activities that I had NEVER done before–and I taught myself how to do them.
The five activities I chose for myself:
1) baking cupcakes
2) sewing up a patch on a rip on my jeans
3) planting tomatoes
4) cooking a dinner for five friends
5) shopping for a wedding gift for a friend
I screwed them all up one way or the other, but what the hell? I learned. Then I branched out. I looked at other chores that I paid others to do for me and I tried them myself. I changed my own oil, I put up some drywall, I washed my car.
TASK: Look at the things that other people, especially women, do for you. Write them down. Pick 5 and do them yourself. Take you time and finish each one.
Let me know what you did this week. [email protected]
Photos by FaceMePLS and Joe Doe