A Night Out

Under normal circumstances, my household operates with the orderly precision of a tribe of wild Indians in full battle retreat. However, it isn’t until I start preparing for an evening out that things actually descend into utter chaos.

Centuries ago, in my maiden youth, I remember spending an entire Saturday afternoon getting ready for a date. Today, if I get five clear minutes between the time I finish drying the last supper dish and the first blast my husband toots on the car horn outside, I consider myself truly blessed.

The reason I’m always late is that my children bitterly resent my having any social life. Their firm conviction is that at my advanced age I should spend my few remaining evenings rocking and knitting and watching TV. Therefore, as soon as I start preparing to go out, they develop headaches, unquenchable thirsts and difficulties in long division—a monumental conspiracy to keep me chained to the medicine cabinet, the refrigerator and the grade four arithmetic text.

Hard as this is, I infinitely prefer it to their destructive attempts to help. One child fills my evening bag with lego bricks; another takes garbled messages on the phone; a third spills face powder into my shoes, while the baby runs around grabbing everything that isn’t nailed down and throwing it into the toilet.

But, demanding as the children are, their performance pales in comparison with that of their father. Now, I know my husband dressed himself before we were married, and at no time did I ever promise to love, honor and provide valet service. Nevertheless, if I want to avoid having invidious aspersions cast on my wifely abilities, I have to draw his bath, manicure his nails, polish his shoes, lay out his clothes, put in his cuff links and tie his tie.

He never seems to realize that I have to accompany him in an equally suitable state of dress. In what seems to me to be a deplorably unbalanced division of labor, he bathes and dresses with the aplomb of a Persian potentate, while I hysterically feed, bathe, put to bed and supervise the homework of four uncooperative children.

But what makes me such an ardent convert to the Women’s Liberation Movement is that when I finally dash madly out to the car, he actually has the nerve to wonder out loud why women can never be ready for anything on time!