Things have been hectic in Troup’s Corner as of late. In fact, I recently corresponded with the Publisher of The Chestertown Spy to apologize for my truancy, and to announce that I had my latest take on the GOP primary almost ready to go. That night, the other three corners that comprise Troup’s house got hectic too. I unexpectedly found myself in charge of all the aspects of running a household.
My wife and I are not fans of marital scorekeeping. It really doesn’t matter why a spot is on the floor. If you see it and you want it eradicated, grab the sponge. We each fall into normal roles with the primary chores, with neither being more important to complete a task than the other. It all needs to be done. If I want to ensure the continued presence of clean underwear in my drawers, it’s best that I handle the dishes. Was it Confucius who said “Happy wife. Happy life”?
I know scorekeepers. They either bring up their salary, or they trot out the statistic of their hypothetical salary for doing household chores. Homemaking scorekeepers never credit their other half for landscaping wages or sanitation (lawn and trash). Working scorekeepers never account for benefits received. In a twist of fate that is probably the opposite of the scorekeepers’ intention, scorekeepers are so often consumed by the score, that large tasks go undone. They would rather split responsibilities 40/40 than collectively accomplish 100 percent. I had a chance to put scorekeeping to the test.
When my better half went on the disabled list, I became the pitcher, leadoff hitter, clean-up hitter. There were the occasional moments that I had available to cogitate like an adult, and those moments took me to some weird places. When I realized that I had yet to do a single load of laundry, I mentally ran through my kids’ wardrobe like Greg Heffley from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series to see how long I could delay the inevitable. What had I become?
I came to realize that I was essentially bargaining with myself. I was fortunate to have that luxury, as I was confident in our medical professionals that this arrangement was temporary. I also came to realize that if this were a permanent arrangement, my options would be limited. My options would be to sacrifice one task altogether, or to do everything eighty percent effectively. This conundrum has affected more and more families, even ones considered relatively stable, as people take on more and more commitments that fill their calendars.
As families functioning at eighty percent become the norm, we see the effect over time. For the stretched-too-thin parent, video games and nine channels of cartoons beamed to your dish keep kids occupied and give parents some peace of mind in knowing where their kids are. These activities turn kids into bundles of potential energy, and when it turns kinetic, they can go haywire. Meal preparation is also a victim. If you want to eat and have clothes to wear the next day, it’s easier to order out, fry something, or dump it out of a box. This can get the kids fed, but how well?
We take it as a given that we are seeing upticks in child obesity and behavioral disorders. Some feel that the answer is a regulated approach full of PSAs on the Disney Channel and food police in our schools. None of these solutions get to the root of the problem, which seems to be a self-inflicted assault on the familial unit. Fatherhood has been minimized more and more. Want proof? Check out how many signature lines there are for fathers on the paperwork that comes with having a child. What’s more, the men in these equations have done an exceptional job assisting in this trend.
Back to the autobiographical portion of this edition. I’m trying to fall asleep, but being kept awake by the household chores left undone, when my mind visits a very strange place. If it gets more difficult after seventy-two hours, then what about ninety-six, and so forth? What’s more, who would choose this? This led me to the most un-PC of conclusions – Dan Quayle may have had a point.
For the benefit of our younger readers, you probably want to know who Dan Quayle is. Our older readers want to know how a guy who couldn’t spell potatoe could be right about something (our younger readers may also not know that was a joke). Dan Quayle was perhaps, if not likely, the most irrelevant elected Vice-President since whomever happened to handle those duties for Herbert Hoover (time will tell for Mr. Biden). Quayle’s claim to fame was that he waged a war of words with Murphy Brown, a fictional character from a sit-com of the same name. As Louis Black would say, “let me repeat that because it bears repeating”: The Vice President of the United States spent part of an election year waging a war of words with a fictional character from a fictional (not-real) television show.
What was the topic of this war of words, you ask? The title character in Murphy Brown decided to have a child as a single parent. This is a scenario that has since played out on television each week for twenty years on your choice of network, so why the fuss? You have to remember that this was back in the time of the Keatons and the Huxtables, and the Taylors. The fault in Quayle’s ire was that the television show was merely introducing an angle with an already increased presence in the society at large; it wasn’t somehow inventing the concept of single-parenthood. It would be akin to Al Gore thinking that lesbians didn’t somehow exist before Ellen DeGeneres had a sitcom, or if Walter Mondale were shocked to learn of African Americans living in “deluxe apartments in the sky.”
Even if Quayle’s intentions were to highlight how the episode was a symbol of a larger meltdown in family values or to simply state that not everyone has the economic security of a network news anchor (as the fictional character, Murphy Brown did), an argument against a fictional character cannot be won. It’s like yelling at a video game. While the pixelated version of Terell Owens may be an “idiot” and “sucks” for dropping that pass, at the end of the day, you’re yelling at a blinking box (not speaking from experience or anything). Ultimately, a future episode of the show ended with the “VP” having a truck full of potatoes dumped on his lawn. What can you do next – tell those fake reporters to get off your fake lawn? Perhaps most interesting in this feud is that six years later, it would be revealed that the President of the United States (who defeated Quayle’s boss in 1992) had an affair in the Oval Office and said President is largely looked upon in a favorable light. Dan Quayle made family values lose whatever coolness they had left.
When my wife was discharged, she asked how I dealt with my time as a “single parent.” I told her that it was rewarding, but the pay stinks. Then I returned to my thoughts of the prior night. I had the luxury of returning to normal. Everyone lives with their own version of normal. Sometimes they choose it, and other times it chooses them. Either way, twenty years after Dan Quayle when families come in all shapes and sizes, if you are responsible for people other than yourself, make sure that their normal is as normal as it can be.
Michael Troup says
Yes folks, I can spell potato!
Gren Whitman says
After his Potatoe Pocalypse, ex-Veep Dan Quayle declined to run for Indiana governor (1996), declined to run for president (1996 and 2000), and declined to run for Arizona governor (2002).
Steve Payne says
If I were him I would have gone the “She’s an alcoholic” route and leaked to a sympathetic ear that the show is a Mary Tyler Moore rip off.
I love your last paragraph.