I don’t know what women have that is the equivalent to a man relaxing. My experience is most women don’t ever seem to relax. They don’t ever seem to stop doing things. Their reason, as my mother was famous for saying, is “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done.” Or “Who’s going to do it? You?” I believe, for the most part, women are very right about this. I know that my wife has to stay on me to get me up and going as much as possible.
Men think everything is a baseball game. We think we can take a field-level seat at home and just watch what goes on in the house. Look, I know I have a lazy bum in me that just wants to lie around. I know I’d rather sit in my underwear and watch TV than dry a dish or feed the dog. I know if my wife handed over most of what she does to me, within a few weeks the children would look like something out of a Dickens novel and the state would eventually come and take them away. Next would come the people who tent homes for bugs. The kids would be thrown out of school because I’d drop them off around noon and not pick them up till 8:30 p.m.
I know I need to be told to get up and do something; otherwise, I won’t. But it’s my nature to lie around and do nothing. And thanks to my wife, I fight it every day.
Truth be told, I am like my father before me. I also want a hammock. I would love to have one placed in front of an air conditioner so every time I swung to the right, I would get a breeze of cool air. And when I swung to the left, there would sit a big pile of chocolate chip cookies. Yes, I would love to rock my life away. But I can hear my wife saying in my mother’s loud and clear voice, “When do you think you’re going to have time to lie in it?” And thank God for my wife, because for the most part she’s right.