Bad Boys

   My wife, Doralyn, has uttered the following proclamation a lot lately. From it, apparently I am supposed to gather that I am "just as bad as the boys!" Quite often, this proclamation is prefaced by an "omigod" as in "Omigod, you're just as bad as the boys!"
   Now it's essential that you know the boys are not all that bad. But they are boys, after all. And I'm just as bad as them, from what I've heard.
   My wife's biggest problem is that she's having a hard time adjusting to the routines around here. By a clear majority of 4-1 it's quite obvious that the dirty dishes simply are to be tossed into the sink. Not rinsed and put into the dishwasher. The extra floor space in all our rooms was designed to be covered by dirty clothes. Otherwise it is simply unused usable space. And where's the logic to that?
   Speaking of logic, why is it necessary for a cat to have fresh drinking water every day? For goodness sake, as cute and cuddly as our cats are, they are still descendants of ancient and mighty jungle cats, who often went without water for days and, when they did finally find some, were content to drink out of the same slimy mud hole a dead zebra was floating in!

   My wife excels when under stress. What reason, then, to give plenty of notice for anything, when she has proven, over and over, that she can be handed a form requiring filling out, permission, and a twenty dollar bill while in the garage on her way to her car and holding two different kinds of drinks, three assorted bags and purses and work files and manage to fill the form, produce the money and not run one of us through with the hedge clippers, conveniently within arm's reach? And she thinks we're bad for wanting to see her reach her potential?

   As I mentioned earlier, the boys are not even all that bad. If they were constantly robbing the Mac's Milk store, getting their drug-addled girlfriends pregnant, failing school and lopping off body parts in shop and then Doralyn said, "Omigod, you're just as bad as the boys!" well....I guess then I'd feel bad about it!
   The fact of the matter is that the boys are pretty damn good and I don't (for the most part) mind being compared to them. They're all smart, intuitive, loving and kind and I would be happy to be as bad as that! I guess the fact that she seems surprised, somehow, that I am "just as bad as the boys" is a fair bit better than her being astounded that I am "just as good as the boys!"