Brain Fertilizer

Ah, Mother's Day! Today is the day that we give our Moms breakfast in bed, take them out to brunch, buy them jewelry, or nice clothes, let them have the entire day off...whatever we can think of to indulge our maternal figures.

And appease them, I'm thinking.

See, compare and contrast with Father's Day. You get Dad cordless drills, barbecue equipment, maybe a weight set.

Can you imagine the guilt trip you wife/mother would lay on you if all you got her for Mother's Day was a vacuum cleaner, some pots, and a thighmaster? The pain would be unbearable. For you.

It comes down to the same old thing: Guys do what they need to, fulfill their responsibilities, do their job, and without much thanks or appreciation. When they return home, they are expected to do 100% of the nasty, heavy, tiring jobs (because that's Man's work yanno), and still do 50% of the rest of the work, because a man who doesn't do 50% of what women consider to be women's work is just scum. Oh, and since women overestimate their own contribution and underestimate their husband's efforts (that's been pretty much proven), the guy has to do about 60% of the work just to be considered breaking even.

And we reward him on Father's Day (if we even notice or remember) with tools to do more work.

Women go through 9 months of pregnancy and something less than 48 hours of labor. Hey, it surely isn't comfortable in the 9th month, no. But if you talk to any mother, she acts like the day she conceived she was carrying 30 pounds of baby and 50 pounds of water weight within hours, giving her nine months of absolute hell and filling her with such rage that we must, like savages appeasing the volcano God, offer her up tasty morsels and treasure at least once a year* to ensure that she doesn't explode, wreaking destruction and pain on all around her.

[on a side note, someone once asked if one ever wreaks anything but havoc. I think we've shown here, today, that "havoc" isn't automatically "wreaked")

But, honestly folks!, if every year some teen somewhere gives birth to an 8-month old baby at a prom without even having known she was pregnant, how tough can it really be?!??! ...maybe it's all anticipatory fear? Dunno.

All I can really say is women got a nice scam going, and applaud their puissance in manipulation. Oh, and "Happy Mother's Day!"

(*I say "at least once a year", but obviously, women need constant appeasing: don't try to give her toaster oven on Christmas, her birthday, or her wedding anniversary, either)