Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday?

routine of getting that out of their systems once and for all, as well. But hey, who are we kidding? In a world where “penis” is still considered a curse word in kindergarten, are we really getting anywhere when it comes to talking openly about sex with our children?

I could have quit, but I take my motherly responsibilities seriously, so I pushed on. Another site blithely suggested, “If you feel uncomfortable talking to your children about sex, recruit an uncle or a male friend to discuss the subject with your child,” as though Amber alerts were merely a ruse to slow down traffic on the thruway. All this advice did for me was conjure up images of Chester the Molester and Jeffrey Dahmer. Okay, I’ll be sure to try that one. Maybe I could ask a “male friend” along the lines of my husband, I thought. He’s got a penis. I looked over at him, asleep on the couch in front of a Formula One race, remote in one hand, the other lightly resting on his crotch. How did these people ever come to be in charge of the world? This is something I often ask myself. How did men surpass women in status, power, and wealth? These questions come from a place of love, mind you. I live with far too many of them to survive day-to-day existence while harboring any ill feeling. But I will admit that I don’t understand men, and that I consistently find women to be the more capable sex. As early as the age of two, girls leave boys standing bewildered in their dust as they speed along the social, emotional, and intellectual racecourse of life.

Cleo did everything earlier and better than any of the boys; as a group, they were slow to walk and talk, refused to give up breastfeeding at a reasonable age, and were impossible to potty train. They still can’t take a poop without yelling for help, and they can’t even manage to get all their urine consistently in the toilet. Can anyone explain why it is so hard to pee into something the size of a platter with something the size of a cocktail sausage? If I had known good aim violated the laws of physics, I would have trained them to sit down while they pee. They can sit when they poop, so clearly it’s not out of the question. I have noticed that most of them stand in front of the toilet, hands on their hips, penis thrust in the direction of the toilet as they release their man water. “Oh really?” I yell at them. “You choose this moment to not touch the damn thing!?” How is this evolved? How is this the dominant gender?

Since Cleo was four she has fixed herself meals, uncomplicated things like breakfast and small snacks. I can’t begin to imagine one of my boys—much less Peter—taking such proactive measures to conquer hunger.

“Mom, can I have some cereal?” Peik asks me every single morning.

“Sure,” I say.

Like clockwork, fifteen minutes later he starts whining. “Mom, I’m hungry. Aren’t you going to get my cereal?”

“Is your arm broken?”

“Don’t you love me enough to feed me?”

“Didn’t I feed you yesterday?” I rejoin, petting him like a prize Pekingese. “Isn’t that proof enough of my undying love for you, my oldest son, the fruit of my loins, the jewel in my crown?”

“Okay, okay.” He sulks off, rolling his eyes. “I’ll get it myself.”

They can’t overcome hunger, and yet they are given the red phone, the suitcase with the codes, the absolute power of world nuclear annihilation. That seems practical.

Sometimes I think Truman may be my one bright spot—my chance at being shown that men aren’t all nincompoops. But as bright as he is, he can never, ever, ever do his homework without a cattle prod pushing at him.

“Mom, I have to do my homework,” he says, hours after the initial broadcast about how he needs to do his homework.

“Okay,” I say again, “So do it.”

“I need you to help me.” He slumps in front of the unopened book, the blank notebook. I walk over and uncrumple the moist homework assignment sheet clutched in his hand, put the pencil in his other hand, and open the textbook to the page designated. I then walk away.

“There. Now I have helped you. Let me know when you’re actually doing it and get stuck. Until then, you’re on your own.”

I never even knew that Cleo had homework until it came back to the apartment in her backpack, all dolled up with stars and stickers. She never once asked me to acquire special materials for her school projects; she was completely self-sufficient.

After about an hour of sitting in front of his homework, playing air drums with his pencils, Truman Moms me again.

“Mom, I think it says here that I need to build a diorama of a Native American village for social studies class. I think it says that it’s due tomorrow.” He doesn’t meet my eyes, and his start to faintly glisten.

“How long have you known?” I ask him.

“That’s not fair,” he says. “What difference does that make? It’s still due tomorrow.” He is about to burst at this point. Of course, I have known for a week, because another kid in his class has a mother who practically does the projects for her child—or, more precisely, enlisted the help of other moms with an email blast that started with “Do any of you sew?” I can’t let my boys off that easy; what if I’m not around the day they need to put together their own assault rifle in a godforsaken trench somewhere because some male heads of state couldn’t work things out?

I let Truman suffer in silence one long moment more before pulling out my magic bag of pipe cleaners and felt. “Go get the glue gun,” I say, and his face instantly brightens. I figure he did stay up with me all those nights watching Project Runway and encouraged me to go audition, so staying up into the wee hours to build a replica of Manhattan is the least I can do in return.

The multitask gene clearly rests on the X chromosome, as I know of no men who can do more than one thing at a time. Peter routinely gets up from the sofa and wanders into the kitchen for a snack, not even thinking that it might be a good idea to carry with him on his voyage the detritus from the snack he made fifteen minutes earlier. He can amass up to ten coffee cups around his home workspace before Zoila corrals them into the dishwasher. He is a highly intelligent, award-winning architect, but he can never leave the house on time in the morning because he can never find his keys. I can’t even count the times per week he has to put out an all-points bulletin on his eyeglasses. It would make sense to develop a system by which he could remember where these essential items are. A hook by the door? A string on his glasses? A chain that connects his wallet to his belt loop? And his kind run the world?

How many times while I’ve expressed my concern over some alarmingly backward behavior in one of my guys has a sympathetic mother said, “Well, you do know that Einstein didn’t speak until he was four?” And how many of these mothers have only girls? Five minutes of observing Larson’s preschool class is all the proof I need that little girls are superior. They complete sentences and play elaborate games of imagination, assigning roles to one another with alacrity. With an innate understanding of exactly what they want, the girls take charge of the room, organizing cubbies and dressing themselves in color-coordinated outfits, complete with shoes they have actually tied themselves. Peik still needs Velcro. Who tied boys’ shoes before that clever invention? Off in a corner, a clutch of boys is calling each other monosyllabic names as they play with a blue train with a face. Have you noticed that girls have the good sense to avoid toys that endlessly go in circles to nowhere? Trust me, I know I’m not dealing with Einstein in any of my boys; I don’t need to be comforted by the not-so-novel idea that a slow starter can end up on the path of genius. Besides, I bet that Einstein had his mother tie his shoes on the way out the door to college and that she was still wiping up the linoleum around the toilet every time he paid her a visit as a grown man.

I’m not the only one puzzled by how boys become men and then men become the masters of the universe. I have yet to meet a single mother on a park bench, a female teacher, or a pediatrician who doesn’t have the same thoughts. It’s only the men who disagree with me and feel the need to support their counterthesis by listing every accomplishment of every male in history. The only possible explanation I can come up with is that in prehistoric times women needed some space to get the real work done without having to worry about the crotch-grabbing spectacle over on the pile of furs. So the women gave men bows and arrows and taught them how to hunt, and eventually when they got tired of shooting their little weapons at animals they shot at other men, and war began, and then men had something to do with their time. The trend stuck. Whatever the case, I love my boys. I find their antics and inabilities amusing and constantly surprising. I just don’t get how they ever lapped girls when the fairer sex had such a clear lead.