The Man's Job

“Jeff, Jeff wake up! I heard a noise!” Whispering, my wife starts to nudge me, “Wake up, there’s SOMEONE IN THE HOUSE!”

Now, the likelihood that this is actually true is pretty slim.  My wife’s hearing is so keen that she can hear molecules moving within solid objects.  It was probably just a stray valence electron.  In twenty years of marriage, the noises Tami has heard in the middle of the night have never amounted to anything.

Frankly, I’m in a warm bed here.  It’s probably 3:00 in the morning.  If it’s a burglar, well, our stuff really isn’t worth that much.  Moreover, I don’t want to scare my wife, but she is more equipped to deal with this than I. If he tracked mud in the house, she would pummel him where he stood, and send him running for the Mop ‘N’ Glow. 

At least that what she does to me.

So I whisper back, “If you were sleeping you wouldn’t have heard it.”  I deduced this because I was sleeping and I didn’t hear anything. But we all know I am not getting back to sleep until I go check it out.

“Get down there!” she says to me in one of her high strung whispers loud enough for the burglar to drop our $25 Wal-Mart lamp, adding, “It’s the man’s job!”

The man’s job is a set of tasks on a list none of us men have actually seen.  It has no time constraints, and it contains some pretty cruddy jobs.  It includes taking out the garbage, shoveling snow, raking leaves, mowing lawns, appearing to be attentive in Lamaze classes, having a stern tone when your son gets out of line, moving the cesspool in the back yard three feet to the right, and barehanded fistfights with post-midnight intruders.

I guess getting up in the middle of the night to a non-existent threat isn’t that heavy a cross to bear.  On the other hand, last year terror actually did strike our home.  It began with a blood curdling scream from the kitchen.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  I immediately, recognized this as my own damsel in distress. It took me a few seconds to get my bearings straight, but when I finally got focused, I remembered I had bought a gun just for this occasion. So I grabbed my rifle and headed toward the scream from the kitchen.

What I saw there was horrifying. The love of my life is standing on a chair, wide-eyed and hyperventilating, trying with all her might to scream again, but nothing was coming out. I looked around for the terrible villain and didn’t see anything.

“Tami! What is it!?” I yelled.

All she could do was gasp for air, (I think she sucked in part of the drapes) and pointed at the floor. Another “Aaaaaahhhhhhh!!!” It was moving along the floor with eight legs of pure evil; quite possibly the largest daddy longlegs ever to creep the earth. This thing had a small infant in its teeth. Or a bagel crumb…I’m not sure which. All I know is I was suddenly face-to-face with the opportunity to prove my love for Buttercup. With adrenaline and testosterone rushing through my veins, chest hair sprouting like weeds, and a suddenly deeper voice than was normally mine, I told Tami to stand back. I raised my rifle, pointed it right at the arachnid’s eyes, and squeezed off what I thought would be the fatal shot.

But the BB just knocked the crumb out of his mouth.  I didn’t have time to re-pump my Daisy rifle, so it looked like I would have to take on the beast in hand-to-hand combat. Mano a mano.  Two legs against eight. Bring it on!

I dropped the gun and went after our intruder with a vengeance. It would be the mother of all exterminations. But just as I assumed the “Crane” martial arts position, Tami hollered, “You’re not going to kill it are you?”

“Uh… why no.  I was going to give it some anger management counseling….”

I thought of Saint Francis, who really walked this earth with delicacy and grace for all living creations.  If he’d see a small creature in the road, an earthworm, a snail, a frog, he would bend down and gently lift the little being out of the way of the horse's hoof and wagon wheel and say, "Peace be with you, Little Brother.”

So I caught a glimpse into his little eyes. For the first time, I saw another side of this eight-legged beast, his softer side. He wasn’t a callous bagel thief. He was just misunderstood. Maybe he was looking out for his family just as I was looking out for mine. Maybe he had moved into our house long before we did. Maybe I was the intruder. And now, looking at him, not his fangs but his heart, I could see him for who he really was: just a regular Joe, out hunting for food to bring to his kids. I began to see our similarities rather than our differences. It was moving me to a place inside myself I didn’t know that much about: my sensitive side.

Besides, last time I squished a bug with my shoe, Tami made me clean it up.  You might have thought that was “the woman’s job,” but there is no such list.  I suppose women would argue that they get all of the job’s that aren’t on the relatively short the man’s job list. I’m afraid they might be right and I think I better change the subject.   

I did the cover-with-a-glass-slide-the-paper-under thing and let it go outside.  I said, “Peace be with you, little brother.” And then added sternly, in a sort of a Scarface voice, “But don’t even think about coming back.  You don’t want to get on my bad side, my leetle friend.”

But this morning I did get out of bed at 3:00 a.m.  And as I walked about the darkened (and deserted) downstairs, my mind did wonder whether I was about to come face-to-face with some real evil.  Could this be the day when I get hit over the head with the $9.95 Wal-Mart fire poker and meet my Maker?  Of course it could happen; bad things unfortunately happen like this everyday and all over the world.

I took some pride in doing my man’s job.  I thought of how much safer I was making Tami feel.  I thought, if it ever really came down to it, I would fearlessly lay my life down for her.  In fact, I never really felt alive until I had something more valuable than my own life:  something worth dying for.  I never understood this until I met my wife. She was the first person I truly fell in love with. She captured my heart. Later on, it was my children, and finally, Jesus Christ. I would be willing to die to save any of them, just as Jesus was for me.  As a result, I am more alive today than I have ever been.

Maybe that’s the real man’s job.

© 2005 Jeff Allen.  All rights reserved.