Hear This Humble Pool Boy Out, Virginia Woolf

I will begin this post with the following statement: I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that either gender is superior to the other.

I needed to get that out of the way because I spent the better part of today cleaning up my swimming pool. This process is normally a simple one that requires a few minutes each day. You use the net to get larger bugs and dirt, run the filter, and add chlorine. That’s about it.

I was gone for a week and left all the necessary tools to perform said daily maintenance in plain view for my wife to access. A week of inattention is just long enough to make cleaning the pool afterward a pain in the ass. Dirt builds up. Bugs that were floating on the top now sink to the bottom. The filter cap can become congested. The water gets cloudy.

This led me to realize that there are certain things women will do and certain things they won’t. In this particular instance, they will want the pool to be set up and swim in it. They will not, however, set it up or clean it thoroughly. Perhaps women have an instinctual impulse to leave pool maintenance to a shirtless pool boy as they merely lay in or near the pool looking good.

I can’t quite explain why my wife is unable to do certain things like cleaning the pool, but I can observe them and there are others. She is entirely unable to kill a spider. Starting the lawnmower is beyond her realm of expertise. Putting gas in the car has been done but only in the direst of emergencies such that it is an activity that can be placed in the same category as most of Bear Grylls’ survival techniques. I’ll drink my own pee or eat a reindeer’s eyeball only if it is absolutely necessary to keep me alive.

I’m not picking on her. I’m merely observing and taking note. There are plenty of things that she can do far better than me. Shopping for shoes, feeling emotion, not falling asleep in the middle of conversations, and cooking a meal consisting of something other than meat and on something other than a grill are just a few.

There are simply undeniable differences between the average man and woman. I happen to find it funny when I notice these things.

I am perfectly able to accept that women can do just about anything they set their minds to as well as a man and vise versa. I don’t believe men are to go out and work and women are to stay home with the children. In fact, I think I would be the one of the two of us to feel more comfortable as a stay-at-home parent. I have absolutely no inner drive to go out and be the bread winner in order to feel like a productive member of society. My career is based entirely out of needing money. My wife on the other hand, seems to feel a greater purpose and actually believe in the point of her job, bless her little heart.

So off I go to finish cleaning the water in the pool. I’ll wade around in it with my shirt off and hope she’s sipping a margarita and eating bon-bons, watching me out the window in lust.