"THE XY FACTOR"
I am not sure exactly when it was that I lost control, but it must have been when my daughter moved out and I was left alone in a house filled with males. When she was home, I had someone to champion my cause of not living in filth. She was my ally in defending the necessity of brushing, flossing, and the common courtesy of not leaving smelly socks on the living room floor. But now I am fighting this battle alone and I am losing !
My home has become Animal House ! It is now teeming with testosterone toting males of all ages shapes and sizes. When you have boys, you seem to acquire their friends by proxy. The driveway is cluttered with cars, motorcycles, and bicycles while the inside of the house has all the charm and elegance of a fishing camp.
Basic biology teaches us that the males of the species have both the X and Y chromosome, the X being the genetic material that carries the trait for female characteristics. Why then can they not reach far enough into their feminine side to at least hang up a wet towel or place a dish in the sink ?
Please don’t get the wrong idea here. I love my sons, I really do. However, there are days when I think that I can no longer cope with the slamming doors, the fishing rods in the hallway corner or the stray fishhook in the carpet that always manages to become lodged in the vacuum cleaner.
I am not forgetting that my daughter was regularly reminded to clean her room since it often looked as if a laundry truck had exploded there but the boy’s rooms look as if the laundry truck collided with a garbage truck prior to the explosion. Not to mention that reminding them to clean it up is the waste of good oxygen on my part. After ‘reminding’ them a few times a week over a month, I gingerly peek inside their rooms to discover that they have still done nothing.
I then make the mistake of asking, “Why have you done nothing ?” I am given a blank stare and then told, “I forgot”.My aunt who has raised three boys of her own has often equated males in terms of her beloved dogs. You must love them, feed them, and pet them to keep them content and it is important to remember that they can obey short commands but beyond that, they’re hopeless. I will try to keep her analogy in mind the next time I pick up a phone to call a demolition team to level the house and salt the earth. It may be that I should just think of it as if they are marking their territory and remind myself that if I stay out of the way I won’t be sprayed.
Diana Meade, ©October 2002.
