Actual conversation at my house this weekend, while I was
doing dishes and Roomie was studying.
Me: “Hey B, can you come help?”
He: “You need help with the dishes?”
Me: “No, I need you to come find the lid to the olive oil.”
He: “You lost it?”
Me: “Yup.”
I continue to wash dishes while he walks in the kitchen,
looks in three places, and turns up the lid to the olive oil.
Me: “What would I do without you?”
He: “You’d lose everything.”
Me: “I’d probably die.”
He: “Probably.”
Me: “Or I’d just have put a piece of foil on the olive oil
and put it back in the pantry.”
He: (shudder)
Me: “Maybe, if I was feeling fancy, I’d have put a rubber
band around the foil.”
Me: “If I could find a rubber band, I guess.”
*At my house, right now, I do most of the cooking. I also do
the majority of the dishes, though Roomie helps. This isn’t because he’s a lazy
jerk or sexist (am I the only person who jumps to this conclusion when a
woman in a relationship with a man does most cooking and housework?), this is because he
teaches two classes (they don’t even create his tests for him, which I think is
total B.S.) and has a full time grad student class load + he’s supposed to be working on coming up with
research plans on some hard-to-find little suckers called diamondback
terrapins.
Backstory: When I was in college and working, I lived with
my boyfriend – a guy I haven’t spoken to in ages. One of the many problems with
that relationship was that he thought that, despite the fact that the number of
hours I devoted to schoolwork and my job waiting tables at a hamburger and
shake shack (any Ducks remember Jamie’s Great Hamburgers?) added up to far more
than his 40 hours every week, I should take care of the majority of the
housework. Because I made less money than he did.
Right. And since I wasn’t so great at keeping house anyway (I’ve
gotten better, but I’m still not stellar. Ask my bathtub.), we lived in total
filth. Most people do that in college, right?
Right. I’m not still traumatized by that experience, but it
was formative. So the way I look at it, if one person has significantly more
time on his/her hands, he or she should do more work around the house.
