Not by the Marmalade.
But by everyone on this busiest calling day.
It’s the one number you don’t need to use the White Pages to look up.
BTW, Verizon no longer publishes those door-stoppers. Save a tree.
The DIY movement kept men busy, and kept moms everywhere at work:
cut your own grass, install your own sprinklers, wash your car, heat up your meals,
(as of this edit, Coke is perfecting the soda fountain with which you can mix your own flavored version.
Here or to go? You might as well say it to yourself)
rent your video (at the machine), pump your gas (which started everything), grind your own coffee beans,
wash and dry your clothes, iron it yourself, steam it (now the local laundryman is out of work), bake your own bread,
barbecue your dinner, scan your own merchandise, install your own shower head (with the help of Home Depot video),
create your own Home page, bag your own bulk groceries (Costco), and fill your own soda , prepare your own tax (Turbo),
assemble your furniture (IKEA) and clean your own office (telecommuting).
You just stop short of changing your own automobile oil (Toyota has its own version of self-accelerated pedals).
No wonder men are busy. So busy. 21 st century men. Totally feminized. As the pill celebrates its 50th birthday,
men are celebrating the disappearance of machismo (and with it, the third place where they can toast a beer or have a smoke outside. Starbucks saw this void
and has been trying to fill it). We no longer need to hunt for food as in pre-historic time. The only thing left is bargain hunting.
Mom would have been proud. That I still manage to have time to read. I understood now that she was a multi-tasker who juggled
her teaching career and house keeping, in a traditional society where women just stopped short of wearing a cover on their faces.
There weren’t any DIY machine to help her out. I was that water boy, the sprinkler etc….
I wouldn’t want my daughters to do chores. So I sacrifice for them to have more screen time with all three screens (TV, computer and phone).
And now I understand my mom. It just makes my free time and fun time all the more sweeter, if any.
Thang Nguyen 555 