Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Come On, Admit It: Moms Run the World

By Bob Wire, 5-04-11

	Happy Mother's Day, Mom! [note: woman pictured is not Bob Wire's mom.]

I raise a chilled glass of Chardonnay (if this were 1974 it would be Chablis) to all the moms out there in honor of Mother’s Day. Be you married, single, divorced, teenaged, geriatric, transsexual, whatever. If you’re a mom, I toast you with this sickeningly sweet fruity libation. I know a lot of you do prefer red wine, but that just doesn’t have the same stereotypical punch for my purposes here.

From my experience with my own mom and with the mother of my children, it’s obvious that Moms are graced with a skill set of special powers, abilities that somehow emerge during childbirth. Call it the Unknown Hormone. These powers include the ability to remember the birthdays of every single person in your family tree, find objects that have been lost since the Bay of Pigs, make a gourmet dinner out of Top Ramen and a packet of mustard, and detect any lie that a child utters, no matter how small or how white.

Dads? With the exception of single fathers (who at some point have to acquire the special powers by artificial means, since they were born without the Unknown Hormone), we learn pretty early on that Mom is the boss, and we can’t compete. Oh, we Modern Dads learn to change diapers, administer a bottle, bathe the baby and all that, but once they enter school, most of us find it’s best to just get used to riding the bench.

I don’t know if kids just instinctively don’t trust us, or if they understand the truth, which is that men, since they don’t go through pregnancy, are wildly inconsistent with their commitment to parenthood. We have no Unknown Hormone to effect a physiological transformation that prepares us to be parents; we have to be talked into it. We have to convince ourselves that this baby will be the most important person in the world. Some of us buy it, but some of us never quite abandon the hedonistic selfishness displayed by the male of the species, which peaks at about age 15.

Example: Let’s say your sixth-grade daughter approaches you on a Sunday evening with the news that her science project is due on Monday morning. The Mom will immediately slip into crisis mode, and run through her mental Rolodex to figure out which fabric stores are still open, how much modeling clay is in the craft chest, and how to make gunpowder out of some common household chemicals. “Get your jacket, sweetie, we’ll figure this out. Don’t worry about it.”

Conversely, when the Dad receives this news, he will snort a mouthful of Milwaukee’s Best out his nose and fall out of his recliner, setting the Sunday paper on fire with his cigar. Then he will unleash a stream of obscenities and threats that will make his daughter feel small and stupid. He’ll soon calm down, and he will feel small and stupid. Then the Dad will apologize to his daughter, and offer to take her out to the garden shed so they can scrape the matted grass clippings from the underside of the lawn mower and make a scale model of a hay roll.

Here’s another example: your son, a high school junior, announces over dinner that he’s quitting the track team so he can audition for the role of Albin in the drama department’s production of La Cage Aux Folles. Mom will set down her fork and clasp her hands together, and say something like, “Oh, honey, you will be so good in that role! You’re so expressive! We’ll have to find out your rehearsal schedule so we can plan our evening meals around it. Actors need good nutrition, you know! Oh, this is so exciting!”

Dad, on the other hand, will do a slow burn for a couple of minutes while he gives his son the thousand-yard stare and slowly masticates a bite of pork chop. Finally, he’ll slap his cutlery to the table and snap, “Well, Pacino, I hope we can still take those track shoes back to the sporting goods store. Eighty bucks!”

See, it’s not that Dads aren’t supportive, it’s just that we lack the situational roadmap it takes to keep up with our kids’ ever-changing needs and desires. We almost always arrive at the proper parentally supportive destination, but not without driving our testosterone-fueled emotion Jeeps halfway around the outburst countryside, leaving skidmarks of insult and misunderstanding all over the blacktop our children’s self-esteem.

Moms don’t just know that roadmap like the back of their hands, they are the ones who made it. Moms are the family cartographers. It’s Mom’s way or the highway, even if she makes you think it was your idea.

Don’t feel bad, Dads. We have our roles to play, our functions to serve in the family unit. For one thing, there’s our facilitation of financial liquidity. Question: where can I find an ATM at this hour? Answer: what room is Dad in? We may not know what setting to wash tights on, but we’re smart enough to keep our wallets full of walking-around money. Kids (and Moms) will hit you up for whip-out at the most unexpected times. And Dads don’t like writing checks for two dollars.

Dads are the go-to parent for several things: helping our kids in sports (mostly because we get to play too); cooking meat on a grill; building a proper campfire; cutting down a pesky tree; dressing a gory, bloody wound; assigning nicknames; performing complex practical jokes; and a few other life skills like yodeling and blowing bubbles.

For everything else, kids count on Mom. And that’s as it should be. Women make up half the population on this planet, and they possess roughly 75% of the common sense. It might not seem so on the surface, but rest assured that Moms are running the show. So on this Mother’s Day, spare no expense in lavishing the Moms in your life with flowers, treats, gifts, and other things that make her smile.

Because it’s true what they say: If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

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