Marriage, the Cleanup Gene, and other Wonders my Thai Wife has Taught Me

What is it with women that they have an insatiable urge to make everything clean, neat, and tidy? Sure, women are different from us. But why do they have to be s-o-o-o-o-o damn different?

Watch what happens if something is out of place when you both walk in the door. Maybe there is a candy wrapper on the floor. Or a gecko has spread a small smear down the wall. Will your woman flop down gratefully onto the sofa like you, put her feet up, pop open a beer, and turn on the TV? Like hell she will.

She’ll be after that blemish on her world before you have even flopped down. The mop and bucket will appear magically and she’ll be down on her knees maniacally attacking that stain. She’ll probably even straighten the wrapper and fold it neatly before depositing it into the rubbish bin.

It doesn’t matter where your woman is from. She can be from a little village in the backend of Buriram, or she could be from a rich Chinese Bangkok family. Just let one little thing get out of place in the house and she is onto it like a horsefly to dung.

Eeeeeeeee! A spot on the table.

Zooooom. Zap. Swipe. Cleeeeeeeeaaaaaan!

Only after she has attacked the intruder will she feel she is living in sanitized goodness. As far as she is concerned everything must be spotless, in its own place, and only then will the world be right for her again..

Your woman could be a cop. But if there is the slightest blemish on her desk she will take care of that long before she tries to deal with a murder case.

And don’t start thinking I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning to write this. You know…yes you do…deep down inside that your woman is the same. Do you lift the toilet seat before you take a leak? Ok, maybe you do, but how many of you put the seat down again afterwards?

Yeah, I thought so. She told you to, didn’t she?

How about squeezing the toothpaste? You and I, we squeeze it from the bottom up. That’s logical. But that damn woman just grabs and squeezes. Don’t you wish she squeezed your dong like that more often?

There’s nothing wrong with the sexes being different. Most of us wouldn’t be here in Thailand if that essential difference didn’t exist. But I have a theory. I think women have another gene the scientists haven’t found yet. I call it the Cleanup Gene. That’s the gene that forces them to spot a mess anywhere, any time, and spring into action to clean it up.

If we could figure out a way to harness that gene maybe the world would be a much cleaner place. But there is one very annoying problem women have to contend with.

Yep, you guessed it. Us men!

We are the problem. I know. My wife tells me all the time. I bet yours does too.

Who cares if the floor is spotless? Not me. But my wife sure does. So I don’t understand why she won’t let us eat off the floor.

My mother, (you guess it — another woman), can’t even stand to see an ant crawling across the floor. Nope. She’s on the phone immediately after she has had hysterics calling the pest exterminator to come on over and get rid of that unsightly beast sullying her spotless kitchen. She’s wiped out whole universes of ants. Along with them, the poison the pest control man lays down decimates squadrons of beetles, small lizards, and even a few birds as well. But the house is clean….it sure it!

We men would let the dishes pile up in the sink, drop the newspapers on the floor until there is a mound ten feet high around the couch. We just couldn’t care less if our beer can sullies the pristine coffee table top. But not a woman. Everything has to be perfect or she can’t relax until it is.

But wait! There’s another gene the scientists haven’t found yet too. This one I call the Furniture Moving Gene.

Don’t even get me started on that one.

Oh oh! Too late.

Have you ever gone out in the morning and then come back in the afternoon to a different house? You know what I’m talking about don’t you? After a hard day at the office you come home bleary eyed, wander into the kitchen and go to the fridge for a beer.

Only it’s not there.

Where’s the damn fridge? It’s moved! Now it’s across the room snuggled into another corner.

Oh yeah. That’s good. Now you have to remember to turn hard right as you enter the kitchen, instead of stumbling across the darkened room in the wee hours and crashing into a small table that wasn’t there yesterday.

Yep. She not only moved the damn fridge, she put new furniture into the kitchen as well just to make her domain even more of an adventure. But it’s that fridge that really gets me. My wife just barely comes up to my nipples when she’s wearing high heels. But somehow she manhandled that huge fridge out of the small alcove it was shoved into so tight you couldn’t squeeze a cigarette paper beside it. Somehow, she moved that monster fridge full of food and drinks right across the kitchen to the other side of the room without spilling anything. How do they do that?

Is the new position next to the door an improvement?

You tell me.

Now, instead of the fridge door banging into the dish cupboard like it did before, it hangs out across the entrance to the kitchen so that you can’t get into the room while she’s in there rummaging around. And of course, she can’t just open the door, grab what she wants, and then shut the damn thing again.

No! She has to go shopping for something else in there. She probably doesn’t even know what it is she’s looking for. She just wants to look!

What is it with women? What is so damn fascinating on those shelves?

Don’t even bother asking her. She doesn’t know.

Maybe it’s something to do with yet another undiscovered gene; the Shopping Gene.

Yeah. Even in their own kitchens women can’t help themselves. They love to stare at the fridge shelves trying to decide what to pick up; just like they do at the supermarket. Even if all there is in your fridge is a half empty carton of milk and a couple of peanuts she will stand with the fridge door open and just stare at them….fascinated.

The Shopping Gene must be the most retarded gene in their bodies. That’s the one that keeps telling them they absolutely must have that plastic box on special. It doesn’t matter if she hasn’t thought of a use for that box yet. But she’s just got to have it. Maybe it looks too cute to stay up on the shelf with all the other exact replicas of that box. No. this box must be a special one. And she’s got to have it.

I’ve looked hard at all the plastic boxes my wife has saved from loneliness on a supermarket shelf and I can’t see anything to make them special. They are all just plastic boxes. Who knew?

Or maybe she’ll buy some face cream because it’s on special and she gets two for the price of one. Never mind that the bottles are so big it will take her a year to use all the cream, and by then it will be gooey and almost solid. She got a bargain!

Or she’ll wander around the shelves with a full shopping cart just stopping and staring every now and again. Don’t ask her what she is looking for. She won’t know. But she’ll wander around for hours just drooling over shelves full of stuff.

I love my wife. I really do. But sometimes I am just amazed at the things she does. If it was only her I could try to understand. Unfortunately, it’s not. All the other women I ever lived with were exactly the same. They couldn’t live in a house without doing something…anything….to make it more difficult for a simple man like myself to live in. There just is no explaining something like that, is there?

So the next time you look at that woman of yours, don’t try and figure her out. That’s impossible. Just remember that it’s all in the genes. And don’t forget you have your own genes as well. They are just as incomprehensible to her. And that’s what makes it so much fun living with the opposite sex, isn’t it?