In our house Mommy knows where everything is. Well, mostly anyway. There is that once in a while when Mommy
doesn’t know where something is, but usually she does.
It has been that way for me even before I became Mommy. Back when I was just, Wife, it was that way, too. My husband constantly asks me where things are. Things that belong to him, stuff that I never touch, belongings that sometimes aren’t seen for months at a time.
“Do you know where my gray socks are? The ones with the hole in the big left toe?”
“They’re in your top drawer, Dear, underneath your Luchador mask, in the front on the left.”
Not only do I generally know where his stuff is, but I can also give detailed directions and even draw a map if necessary.
I seriously do not know if the man has major problems with keeping tabs on his stuff, or if he simply takes advantage of my talent for remembering everything for him. He had better get a grip in either case because my capacity for preserving any information for longer than thirty seconds is diminishing.
Perhaps his inability to recollect where he keeps his undergarments and such is due to the fact that he belongs to the gender known as MALE. As of late I have been leaning toward this as the likely explanation. The reason being that, as my son gets older I have been able to observe some of the following tendencies in him.
Number One: He can’t focus long enough to follow simple directions.
That little man can ask me where a particular book is, and upon looking down I locate it lying on the floor
touching his foot.
“It’s on the floor, next to your foot,” I’ll say.
“Where?”
“Right next to your foot.”
“Huh?”
“LOOK DOWN!”
He still won’t see it. Really. He’s four. He speaks English better than some forty-year-olds I know. This shouldn’t be that hard.
Number Two: He’ll put something down and immediately forget where he put it.
See Number One.
Now, if that is all part of being a person of the male persuasion, then it would seem that being FEMALE would entail certain peculiarities. Peculiarities like maintaining a detailed catalogue of where everything in the entire house was last seen.
I already see potential in my older daughter for following very successfully in my footsteps. Considering the current state of decline in my mental faculties, this is a very good thing. She is only two-and-a-half, but if she puts her cup down on the living room floor behind the Christmas tree in the corner and drops a blanket on top of it she’ll still remember where she put it. If one asks her where her cup is an hour later she will point in the general direction of it and say, “It’s over dare.”
If one says, “Honey Buns, can you bring me the baby’s rattle from the couch?” She will go and get it. Ask Daddy or her brother to get it and they’d walk around in circles for ten minutes and then say, “Huh?”
In conclusion, it is my opinion, from years of observation and experience, that boys will be boys. And whether or not this is something that they’re born with or that they develop out of a deep liking for being taken care of by competent women, I don’t know. But that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
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