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Art Colony: gender roles, and the 3 wise men at the bus stop
Friday, July 1, 2005
› by victoria
So last night, when we finally got home (and on the way home, went to Chipotle for the first time and shared a shredded steak burrito, x-tra large soda, and bag of chips with guacamole--it was more like walking home gingerly since our stomachs felt like they might explode), Biff went into ballistic-cleaning-mode. He decided he was going to clean up the apartment, and he was going to throw shit away. Now I understand that I have awful habits of being a "pack-rat": I don't like to throw away forms that may be potentially useful. I don't like to throw away much of anything, which is bad. Instead, I prefer to store things like receipts in really bizarre places (I.E. crammed in the pencil jar, or the change jar, or underneath a shoe), and put books in stacks on the floor. But I do clean: I just do the more "what's-that-nasty-smell-oh-it-must-be-the-garbage-can-well-i'll-wash-it-out-with-bleach-then" type cleaning. I do the dishes, I take out the trash, I swiffer the floor. But I suck at organizing.
Ergo, Biff is amazing at organizing. He threw away two GIGANTIC bags full of stuff. He spent 3 hours cleaning the apartment, bringing me to the realization that--gasp!--we do have a floor! And floor space!
The weird thing is that it does seem like we're reversing traditional gender roles. I mean, this is completely typical nowadays, but with the whole cleaning-up thing, it's really bizarre. Because he cooks and cleans better than I ever could! And I'm always at work, or studying, and it just seemed odd at the time. And I felt like a complete slob-cretin even this morning, because he was looking for his student ID number so we could order his transcripts online and he couldn't find it anyplace. So he through away more stuff, and went through piles of stuff, and I was going through piles of books in the bedroom, and he finally found it inside an old backpack pocket. Fact: we need to get more organized, except I'm clueless about the whole process.
It's genetic: my dad hates cleaning things up too. He has a huge 6 foot by 8 foot table that he piles up with papers from his teaching, academic journals, etc. until the piles begin to teeter at about 2 feet, at which point my mom insists that he "reduce the clutter."
This morning, as we were waiting to catch the bus, there were 3 men at the bus stop who kept on cracking jokes and talking to us. It made me smile, and it was definitely the most fun thing that's happened to me so far today. They kept on teasing me good-naturedly about my tall shoes: "How tall are you without those shoes?"
Me: "I'm not sure..."
Them: "Maybe 4 feet?"
It was pertty funny.
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