Picture this normal, every day scenario....
Husband walks in after work. She’s in the kitchen, scrubbing and chopping veg, two kids are at the kitchen table doing some homework or project, her laptop is open and she checks emails and sees what her friends are up to in between googling pictures for one kid and Wiki’ing articles for the other. The pan is sizzling. As soon as she hears his footsteps, she calmly puts the kettle on and plops a tea bag in his football mug. The phone rings. A dear old biddy, Dad’s aunt, rings in to inform her of the progress of her in-grown toenail. She placates her nicely, puts the phone down, checks if Google child needs a new glue-stick from stock…. The kettle starts to boil, she stirs her veg, adds her meat, pours the hot water, gets the milk and by the time he’s in the kitchen, his cuppa is ready. How was your day and all that…he goes upstairs to shower and change. Homework’s almost done, dinner’s simmering. She gets the bucket and mop, gives the kitchen a once over and goes to help the children pack their school bags. Does the school lunches (pressing the F5 button a couple of times in the process), dishing up....all's well.
One day, the routine gets disrupted because she’s got the flu and every single bone in her body aches….so she’s in bed. Kids are downstairs doing their homework. Husband leaves work a bit early. There’s homeworks to supervise and dinner to cook. He breaks out in a sweat….his panic button starts flashing (let’s cue some panicky film scores to help him along). He gets home with a very confused look on his face. There is too much to do and there’s no instruction manual, no FAQ list and no schedule list on his mobile phone gadget thingy…..Kids stare at him in frustration with a grown-ups-are-supposed-to-know-everything look. One needs to wrap up a geography project, due in the next day, and the other has problems with some maths sums she couldn’t understand at school. Both need help at the same time. There’s a defrosted chicken waiting in the sink and two bellies rumbling loudly. So what does he do? Plan B kicks into action. He sends the maths homework kid upstairs to Mum, asks the geography girl what sort of pictures she needs and hides the chicken behind the beer cans in the fridge. Wife won’t see it tonight…will deal with it later. Both homeworks are just about ready when he comes up with this brilliant idea - McDonalds!!!
YAY! We have the best Dad in the world!
Second scenario....
When (and if) he manages to get all this done - something which his wife does excellently, with her eyes closed and while talking on a phone - he feels obliged to give a blow by blow account of how he managed. Wife has to sit there for half an hour, listening to recounts of the heroic endeavour which produced a fried egg, two bits of toast and two slices of crispy bacon, with him expecting the raising of the flag at the end and a gold medal too - all cos he's done something "for her" (we've all heard the words "għamilthomlok", "sajjartlek", "mort nixtrilek".... etc., etc.).
I think by now you’ve noticed that I’m not describing a household fairytale but I’m really talking about......Men and Multi-tasking.
They can fix drains, program a satellite receiver, assemble flat-pack furniture, do basic car maintenance and burn food on the barbeque (not all at the same time, of course). But when it comes to cooking breakfast, you’d have to choose between one with runny eggs or another with burnt bacon! Managing a multi-task breakfast is something which requires lots of training, and maybe written instructions (don’t forget the bullet points!), with directions, cooking times, names of correct utensils and ingredients listed too.
Some argue that this is due to the process of evolution. Women have evolved doing the child-rearing and home-making, while men generally focused on a single task - hunting. Others argue that a person’s IQ drops by ten points when multi-tasking, and that since men have more demanding jobs, they need their full IQ potential at all times to carry out their single tasks (this has something to do with it: don’t answer the phone while doing something extra-
| hard at work | |
So.... how do we explain women with high flying jobs - successful jobs - who pick up their kids from school, take them home, supervise the homeworks, cook dinner and answer work emails at the same time? Does the IQ of these women drop down by ten points? (or maybe, is it that they can afford the drop?
) One scientist who claimed that there was a genetic reason for men being better than women, IQ-wise, apologized later. You can read all about it
| here | |
Are men one-task beings because of nature, or are they so because they have absolutely no training in juggling different jobs at the same time? Are men brought up to be so pampered and untrained in doing daily tasks ("He’s not a girl - he wont need to!") by mollycoddling mums, that they are at a loss once they enter married life?
Like…(Chill! I’m not talking about your mother here, but I’m sure you do have a friend whose mother is like that or worse)... buttoning his shirt when he’s on his way out, making sure he has a varied lunchbox made with ingredients he doesn't even know are found in the kitchen, threading his belt through the loops of his trousers, preparing his underwear and socks at the edge of the bed, matching his shirt and tie, shining his shoes....heqq, he’s only a young boy miskin.
He’s only just turned 24 last September - ejja give him a break!
No comments:
Post a Comment