DATE: Sunday, September 14, 1997            TAG: 9709110205

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: DAVE ADDIS

                                            LENGTH:   89 lines

HOW AM I MANAGING? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS

My wife was in the hospital for four days last week. She's home now and healing nicely, thank you, and I'm really glad she's back. Not just because I missed her terribly, but now I no longer have to deal with female friends who seem to believe that any man left to his own devices for more than 12 hours is likely to need disaster-relief assistance from the Red Cross.

I don't know how many times, just after inquiring about The Patient, these good and well-meaning women would look at me with sad eyes, drop their voice to that annoying deepest pity setting and ask, ``And how are you doing, having to get by all on your own?''

Never mind that I've been married just 11 months and spent the previous 11 years looking after myself. You could tell in an instant what they were thinking.

Each of them was certain that within just 96 hours I somehow had managed to dirty every plate, drinking glass and spoon in the house, plus all the underwear I have ever owned, and that everything likely was lying in a foul steaming heap on an oriental rug in the living room, covered by a layer of green mold.

Pizzas, mysteriously, would be stuck to the ceiling. Wet Cheerios would be oozing along the baseboards, and the contemporary sofa-and-loveseat setting will have been updated with a Chinese-takeout-box motif. (Oh, Dave, I just adore what you've done with the moo goo gai pan!) The only thing not covered in slime would be the TV remote.

The houseplants would have died instantaneously, and the cat probably was stiff with rigor mortis, most likely in the fresh-vegetables bin of the refrigerator. A McCormick Reaper would be needed to collect the whisker-shavings from the bathroom floor.

Worse, they would be certain that once my wife was discharged to my care, I would connect her IV to a Molson bottle and try to convince her that part of the surgeon's recommended physical therapy includes hand-scraping axle grease from the knees of my bluejeans.

The reality here is that my wife returned to a spiffed-up home in which not a plant or animal had died. The dishes were clean and in their proper cabinets. The laundry is on spin-dry even as I write this. And, playing to both her love of food and her mandated bland diet, I did up a quick little welcome-home dinner of fresh fettucine tossed in a very light Alfredo sauce with steamed broccoli, parsley and poached bay scallops. With a citrus-and-lettuce salad on the side. A nice palate-cleanser, don'tcha know.

This is not to pat my own back. Nearly every male I know is self-sufficient, fairly capable in both the kitchen and the laundry room, and repulsed by the prospect of living amidst filth and swill. In this era when stereotypes - particularly those aimed at women - are politically incorrect, I'm at a loss to explain why this one is allowed to persist. Perhaps it s the fault of that cheesy television sitcom, ``Men Behaving Badly,'' in which two losers who share an apartment amuse the audience by eating food they find under couch cushions and drying their underwear in the microwave. Hah, hah, hah.

If you re a woman and you re reading this right now, steaming, and saying, ``Hey, my husband/lover/live-in-slug is a complete pig and most every other guy I've know is, too,'' well, all I can say is, hey, you picked him. If you'd have spent as much time checking him out as you did checking out the last pair of sling-backs you bought, you wouldn't be spending your Saturdays trying to pry his socks out of the air-conditioning vents.

I recently overheard two young women discussing guys they were trying to meet. The questions, in this order, were: What kind of car does he drive? How tall is he? What color is his hair? Never once did anybody ask, When you look into his eyes, do you get the feeling that he couldn't pour water out of a boot without help from his mommy?

My wife, on the other hand, is enormously practical. She has learned that life is a trade-off. She is willing to accept that I look more like Yasser Arafat than I do William Baldwin, so long as she knows she can take a nap and not worry that I'll burn the house down around her while trying to figure out what makes water boil. She doesn't mind that I spend too much time loafing in the hammock so long as she can leave for a business trip and know that I won't wash the oven mitts with her lambswool sweaters and then wonder why they all came out of the dryer the same size.

There seems to be a belief out there that domesticated men come in just two varieties: the totally useless, and the prissy new-male Felix Unger type. I wish people who believe this had met The Patient's hospital roomie, who confessed that her significant other - a retired Navy SEAL - was the most fanatical house-cleaner she'd ever seen. (I met the guy. He may be gray on top these days, but I don't think it would be wise to tease him for his skills with a can of Pledge. You might get waxed in places you'd never imagined needed it.)

But it's a losing game. Stereotypes die hard, and ``Men Behaving Capably'' wouldn't be much fun as a TV show. I could carp about the unfairness of it all day long, but right now I have to go put another load in the dryer and start steaming some rice for dinner. MEMO: Dave Addis is the editor of Commentary. You can reach him at

446-2726, or by e-mail at addis@worldnet.att.net

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