The secret is… the possession or the lack of emotion memory, mutually exclusive to women and men respectively. I lost you there didn’t I? Let me start again.
I’m kind of jealous of other writers who have these mad husbands and hilarious children that provide brilliant fodder for their blogs. Like when Woog’s husband cooks dinner or Kerri Sackville realises that her daughter hates her. Personally, I have very little to work with. My man is pretty bloody perfect*. The worst article I’ve written about my relationship was this one and I incriminated myself far more than Mr Smaggle.
The Perfect Man has however, developed a rather new and Very Annoying Habit and I’m all over it like a fat kid on cake. When Mr Smaggle gets changed he takes off the clothes he is wearing and drapes them over the edge of the washing basket. Not IN the washing basket, DRAPED over the EDGE of the washing basket. The reason he does this, is because he hasn’t yet decided whether or not his clothes are dirty. This happens EVERY SINGLE TIME HE GETS CHANGED. I can’t ever put dirty washing IN the basket because it’s covered in his drapey clothes. I’m about to punch a wall.
The reason why I’ve become so irrational over this pretty harmless behaviour is because, as a woman, I have an emotion memory. Every day that I am annoyed by Mr Smaggle’s draping, it’s added to the Total Amount of Times That I’ve Been Annoyed by the Draping. Basically, it’s incremental. So after a few weeks of enduring the draping it leads to disproportionate nagging and then I want to hurt him. For draping his clothes over the dirty clothes basket. It’s mental.
Seasoned readers will know that I pride myself on my general perfection but I admit that I do have the odd bad habit. Odd being the operative word. My favourite one is when I replace the empty toilet paper roll with a full one, I put the empty roll on the window sill and leave it there. My excuse is that a) toilet going for ladies is a two-handed exercise thus I have to put the empty roll down and b) I have the attention span of a gold-fish and once I put the empty roll down my brain starts thinking about more important things like bricks and food.
This annoys Mr Smaggle but only when it’s right in front of his eyes. His brain goes – ‘Empty toilet roll on the window sill. That’s annoying. I’m going to walk away. I’m no longer annoyed.‘
And the next time this happens? Mr Smaggle’s Brain – ‘Empty toilet roll on the window sill. That’s annoying. I’m going to walk away. I am no longer annoyed.’
It’s brand new annoyance every time. There’s no snow ball effect. How do I know this? He only ever mentions it when he has come immediately out of the bathroom and I happen to be the first thing he sees. Otherwise the problem doesn’t exist.
I’ve witnessed countless arguments where women can effortlessly rattle off a list of Very Annoying Habits while men stand there wracking their brains trying to come up with even one feeble point of retaliation. Man Brain – ‘Damn it… I was annoyed this morning! Why was that again…?‘
It’s not that women are less tolerant or even less flawed than men. It’s because our emotion memory is so efficient. It’s why women can sit around talking about feelings for hours. It’s like our version of talking about sex. Also, men don’t care about most things. Mr Smaggle has let my toilet roll habit develop into art installations on several occasions because his emotion memory is totally crap. Whereas I will violently fling his jeans across the room at least twice a day because my emotion memory is reminding me that this Very Annoying Habit has pissed me off at least three times this week. Different strokes.
In conclusion, ladies please remember that men (no emotion memory) are like dogs and every time you chastise them they will have forgotten it thirty seconds later. So try not to be too harsh. And gentlemen, we ladies (photographic emotion memory) wouldn’t have to nag if you just got it right the first time. Towels = hung on racks. Dishes = in dishwasher. Clean dishwasher = empty it. Hope that helps.
And do feel free to have a little rant in the comments! Or comment on Facebook or Twitter.
Love Smaggle
* That jerk just gave me the last chocolate covered macadamia nut. Do you see what I’m dealing with here?