Opposites Attract

Through all my frustration and tears over the last few weeks I have come to realize just how different men and women are and how we see, feel and experience the world around us. Dave and I took our sack of troubles and hushed it out, talked it out, drank it out and then humped it out, the latter being my preference. Hours were spent trying to figure out how better to talk to each other when referring to jobs to do or chores done. We are a great team, two slicked down synchronized swimmers with waterproof glitter and nose plugs. But Dave is the one who would insist that he is the hottest swimmer, the one all the boys want to feel up after practice. I, on the other hand, would take that comment personally. Did he just call me fat? Do any of the boys even know I am alive? I bet he thinks I cannot do a half water twist with an Arabian leg lift as well as he does. I would stew over it for weeks and weeks, ending up in a tearful near drowning accident during the all important free swim competition.

Meanwhile, he has forgotten about it within seconds of the comment leaving his lips. It would never occur to him to censor himself or feel bad for being so arrogant and possibly hurting someone else’s feelings. Just because he knows unequivocally that he is the hottest synchronized swimmer, it never occurs to him that he might make someone feel bad if he boasts about his amazing calf muscles or his lovely body position in the pool. It is as if men have no radar or memory for feelings and emotions other than great physical pain and immense physical pleasure. Two people can fight like cats and dogs or simply have a small argument and the woman will most likely sit with her feelings and replay the moment in her brain over and over again until she feels like an aged prostitute with a broken high heel and no john.

Then, there is the visual element to the equation. I can walk into the living room at any given moment and see a pile of toys that need to be put back in their basket or storage bin before I settle in. Dave would see a collection of small, colorful objects that have created a road hazard and a more exciting serpentine route to the sofa, where he will sit down, read a comic book or turn on an old episode of Lost. Where I see a small mound of chewed up food in the corners of Otto’s high chair after he has finished a meal, Dave will see nothing at all and go about his business as if there was not a bio hazard growing in the crevices of Otto’s sacred food station.

I have been going crazy. Fucking coo coo bird, actually, about the little things going unnoticed and undone and the lists, list, lists in my head. Dave does a ton of shit, do not get me wrong and I could list them and impress you but it will only feed his immense ego when he reads this so called list of wonderful. So, I will simply say this. I finally realized that he really does see and hear and feel things in a completely different way as I do. I am not a fan of the Venus Mars comparison. In fact, that book and its title has annoyed me since the mid nineties when the authors did their television book tour with bad double breasted suits and claims that they still had great Tantric sex. If I wanted to projectile vomit at a moments notice I would drink Ipecac, thank you very much.

Let us take today for instance. Today began as a typical stressful day. I was running late and needed to make sure I had everything in his diaper bag in case of nuclear war. Dave can leave the house with a single house key, an apple and Otto wearing nothing but a diaper and a smile and feel good about it. I need four costume changes, six diapers, a sun hat the size of a blimp and enough food for a month.

I then took Otto to exercise class where I watched him shoot hoops like a small, white Michael Jordan and then have a poopy diaper that smelled like a rain soaked cemetery. I was forced to leave class and use a public restroom with only two diaper wipes, causing mild palpitations and profuse sweating on my part. This scenario would not have affected Dave in the least. He would have laughed at the smell, walked into the bathroom, casually thrown Otto on the microbe infested changing table and used his socks to wipe Otto’s perfectly stink covered butt.

After class was over and my armpits had sufficiently dried up, Otto and I had a forty-five minute window to grocery shop. The moment we entered the store Otto began whining in the produce isle, insisting I let him eat every cylindrical object he spotted, as unwashed and unsanitary as a Mexican sidewalk. No way! That will never happen on my watch. While I am sure Dave would simply spit shine a Chilean blueberry or sleeve polish a grape tomato and hand it right over to Otto without a second thought, I could never do that.

When we got home and I lugged all the groceries inside making sure Otto did not run into traffic and lie down, I made him lunch while stressing about the things I could not get at Trader Joe’s. I then texted Dave the remaining Whole Foods items that I could not live without, hoping he would pick them up after finishing up his day. Otto ate really well, only throwing two pieces of food across the room and I got him down for a nap in record time after Dave called to tell me exactly how to exhaust him by making him count before nap time. Hmmm…

I was still cleaning the kitchen, making lists in my crazy head and worrying about finishing the laundry, picking up the toys and writing something before Otto woke up when Dave walked in the front door with my requested groceries in one hand and a small box in the other. He opened the box and plugged some sort of cord into the wall behind the television. With a wicked smile on his face and a skip in his stepped he turned to me and said, “I got this AV cable at the Apple store so I can plug in my IPod to our TV and we can watch porn!”

I rest my case.