Dave Barry: Bad Habits

But then men made a stupid mistake. They started to believe that “business” really was hard work, and they started talking about it when they came home. They’d come in the door looking exhausted, and they’d say things like “Boy, I sure had a tough meeting today.”

You can imagine how a woman who had spent the day doing housework would react to this kind of statement. She’d say to herself. “Meeting? He had a tough meeting? I’ve been on my hands and knees all day cleaning toilets and scraping congealed spider eggs off the underside of the refrigerator, and he tells me he had a tough meeting?”

That was the beginning of the end. Women began to look into “business,” and they discovered that all you do is go to an office and answer the phone and do various things with pieces of paper and have meetings. So women began going to work, and now nobody does housework, other than smearing and shining, and before long there’s going to be so much crud and bacteria under the nation’s refrigerators that we’re all going to get diseases and die.

The obvious and fair solution to this problem is to let men do the housework for, say, the next six thousand years, to even things up. The trouble is that men, over the years, have developed an inflated notion of the importance of everything they do, so that before long they would turn housework into just as much of a charade as business is now. They would hire secretaries and buy computers and fly off to housework conferences in Bermuda, but they’d never clean anything. So men are out.

But there is a solution; there is a way to get people to willingly do housework. I discovered this by watching household-cleanser commercials on television. What I discovered is that many people who seem otherwise normal will do virtually any idiot thing if they think they will be featured in a commercial. They figure if they get on a commercial, they’ll make a lot of money, like the Cheerful Housewife, and they’ll be able to buy cleaner houses. So they’ll do anything.

For example, if I walked up to you in the middle of a supermarket and asked you to get down and scrub the floor with two different cleansers, just so I could see which one worked better, you would punch me in the mouth. But if I had guys with cameras and microphones with me, and I asked you to do the same thing, you’d probably do it. Not only that, but you’d make lots of serious, earnest comments about the cleansers. You’d say: “I frankly believe that New Miracle Swipe, with its combination of grease fighters and wax shiners, is a more effective cleanser, I honestly do. Really. I mean it.” You’d say this in the same solemn tone of voice you might use to discuss the question of whether the United States should deploy Cruise missiles in Western Europe. You’d have no shame at all.

So here’s my plan: I’m going to get some old cameras and microphones and position them around my house. I figure that before long I’ll have dozens of people just dying to do housework in front of my cameras. Sure,most of them will eventually figure out that they’re not going to be in a commercial, but new ones will come along to replace them. Meanwhile, I’ll be at work.

I have two major complaints about electricity.

First, I cannot understand my electricity bills. I never even read them anymore: I just pay whatever random amount the electric company puts after “PAY THIS AMOUNT.”

Frankly, I suspect the electric company doesn’t have the vaguest notion how much electricity I use. I have an electric meter, but it is on the side of the house where a large contingent of killer wasps has lived since 1977, and nobody, not even my dog, ever goes there. I suspect that whoever is supposed to read my meter is lying out in the bushes somewhere, covered with stings.

So I think the electric company is just making my bill up out of thin air. Oh, they’re very clever about it: They make the bill so elaborate that I won’t suspect anything. It looks like this:

Adjusted basic flat usage charge rate: $34.70

Charge for usage of ajusted basic flat: $22.67

Flatly basic adjustable usage rate: $17.31

Maladjustment of usable, chargeable flat rate: $4.12

Ferrous Mineral Tax: $5.12

Tax to Pa $0

The Spanish-American War Debt: $2.89

Gratuity: $1.68

As I said, I always pay these bills. I’m afraid that if I don’t pay, the electric company will send huge jolts of electricity through the wire: one minute I’d be carving poultry with the electric carving knife, and the next minute I’d be a shriveled lump of carbon lying on the kitchen floor. So I pay, but I don’t like it.

My other major electrical complaint concerns appliance plugs. You may have noticed that something very sinister has happened to appliance plugs since you were a child. I grew up during the Eisenhower administration in a normal, God-fearing home with a normal, God-fearing electrical system. All the outlets had two holes, and all the appliance plugs had two prongs, and everything worked just fine. Also the inflation rate was very low.

Now, suddenly, the appliance manufacturers are putting three prongs on their plugs, and you can’t plug them in. What is going on? Has there been some huge mistake in the shipping department, so we’re all getting appliances that were supposed to go to Yugoslavia? Has the government decided that appliances are so dangerous that consumers shouldn’t be allowed to plug them in? Maybe it has something to do with the metric system. Whatever it is, it’s a problem.

The simplest solution is to get a hacksaw and saw off the third prong. Unfortunately, this is a violation of federal law. It’s like removing those little pillow tags that say “DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.” If you are convicted, agents of the Consumer Product Safety Commission will come to your house and lock you in a room filled with government safety publications and not let you out until you can pass an eight-hour written safety test.

So most people use those little plug adapters. This seems to work fine, but if you read the appliance instructions carefully, you’ll note that plug adapters are Not Recommended:

WARNING: IF YOU USE ONE OF THOSE LITTLE PLUG ADAPTERS TO PLUG THIS APPLIANCE IN, ALL THE WARRANTIES AND GUARANTEES AND PROMISES THE SALESMAN MADE ARE NULL AND VOID AND YOU MAY BE UNABLE TO HAVE CHILDREN.

The most radical solution to the three-pronged plug problem is to build a new house with three-hole outlets, or rewire your old house (which costs about the same). But this is really no solution at all, because as soon as everybody has three-hole outlets, the appliance manufacturers will come out with four-pronged plugs, and it will just keep escalating until your average plug contains so much metal that you will need the help of three or four strong men just to lift it.

So there is no good way you can solve the three-pronged plug problem. I think you should write your congressman and tell him to get off his butt and do something about it. Tell him you want the Defense Department to have a few large army tanks cruise up to the appliance manufacturers’ factories and suggest that they start producing two-pronged plugs again pronto. And while you’re at it, tell your congressman to straighten out the electric-bill mess, and maybe do something about my wasps.

What I like best about the telephone is that it keeps you in touch with people, particularly people who want to sell you magazine subscriptions in the middle of the night. These people have been abducted by large publishing companies and placed in barbed-wire enclosures surrounded by armed men with attack dogs, and unless they sell 350 magazine subscriptions per day, they will not be fed. These people are desperate. They will say anything to get you to subscribe, and you cannot stop them merely by being rude: