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Honolulu Lite
A tiny story in the paper the other day got my attention. A 70-year-old Honolulu man allegedly threatened his girlfriend with a machete and a hammer because she had not done the dishes. A dishwasher might
have saved the dayPut aside for the moment the question of what a 70-year-old man is doing with a girlfriend. If you are 70 years old and you're not married or widowed, you should know better than to have a girlfriend. Girlfriends are fun when you have the vigor of a 14 year old. They are sort of demanding when you get into your 30s and 40s. If you still are dealing with girlfriends when you're over 60, there's something seriously wrong with you, not the girlfriend. Can you say Escort Service?
I'm sure there are a lot of extremely attractive 70-year-old men out there, not to me, but probably to a few women. But, come on, if you haven't managed to nail down a solid matrimonial-type relationship with someone in seven decades, maybe you should bench yourself. Pops, it's not happening.
Usually when you read in the news about one of these relationships involving a 70-year-old man and a girlfriend, the girlfriend is of the 25-year-old genre. This turns out to be heaps of fun for the elder gent but hell on expectant heirs when the old bugger goes to his great reward and leaves his multi-million-dollar estate to his little cutie.
I don't know if the relationship between the knife-wielder and his girlfriend has any of these financial overtones; all we know is that some issue over dirty dishes caused large knives and hammers to be brought out.
NOW, any married couple can understand what's going on here. Dirty dishes, and the cleaning of them, are the most under-investigated aspects of marital disharmony addressed by social anthropologists. And I suppose it would be even worse for couples who chose to live together without getting the legal paperwork binding them together as a family unit. A man and woman can be compatible in so many areas: sports, books, movies, sex, restaurants, sex, hobbies, sex and even whether they are dog or cat lovers. But doing dishes is a deal-breaker. When it comes to who's doing the dishes, it's the other person's turn.
But why is it such a fundamental problem? You can love someone to pieces. Your spouse (or girlfriend or boyfriend) is caring, loving, recycles, sends you flowers for no reason, gives blood regularly, volunteers at the foodbank, walks the dog (or cat) and doesn't leave underwear hanging on the ceiling fan. But as soon as they don't do the dishes when you think it is their turn, it's not a misdemeanor, but a capital offense.
The 70-year-old man, apparently, and I might add, allegedly, considered it a capital offense or he would not have started breaking out the hardware.
Evolution must have led us here. Since the time of cavemen, doing the dishes sucked. Back then they used those big old rock Flintstone dishes. It took all day just to clean one. That's why the men were always off trying to kill Woolly Mammoths. They would rather have risked their life bringing down a 4,000 pound beast than do a single dish.
The Romans invented slavery just so they wouldn't have to do dishes. Many great discoveries have been made by men who traveled the globe simply to avoid doing the dishes. Columbus discovered America so he could eat off leaves, like the Indians.
This doesn't mean a dispute over dishes justifies hurting someone. It just means that if things aren't going so well on the homefront, break out the paper plates.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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