Looking With Your Eyes Open...

A man’s eyes must be configured with a different operating system than a woman’s.

Their eyes must be manufactured at the same value brand factory that makes the toilet seats that don’t go down, the remotes that constantly flick stations, and the dishwasher doors that just don’t open. It’s a factory that makes the things that just don’t do things all the way. They make all of their almost right products and market them towards men.

The eye thing hit me tonight while I was in the kitchen, making rice to go with the chicken breast that I had the foresight to cook in the slow cooker before leaving for Daniel’s hockey game. I was on the phone with my mother at the time, and trying to Sheppard a toddler from the kitchen lest she get scalded by boiling chicken stock.

Then I hear the words that turn me into an angry bull, every single time. I bet my woman readers know exactly what I am about to say. Men, you are confused because you feel entitled to ask and have no idea why it boils our blood.

“Did you see my (please insert the name of an object there is no chance that you have a tracking device attached to here)”

In this particular instance, Daniel, having just come home from a hockey game, is looking for his NHL 2010 hockey game. He is convinced that somehow, Bridget has opened the Xbox and taken his disk and has somehow poked it somewhere just so he can’t play. Bridget is a clever 20 month old, but I don’t know how well she would do with plotting such a scheme.

I answer, “No, I didn’t see it.”

“But I can’t find it! Dad, I can’t find NHL 10” I hear him wail from the living room.

With that, Jamie sprang into action with the speed and focus of a fireman sliding down the pole on his way to a 5 alarm fire. By action, you might think that he began to hunt for the game, in the living room, near the entertainment unit, or on the mantle where we put everything not ideal for Bridget to carry around.
But he is not in the living room. He is in the kitchen-with me, and the chicken breast.

“Aim, did you see NHL 20- Daniel can’t find it.” He asks breathlessly. This is a crisis.

“Did you check up on the mantle?” I ask, already annoyed at what I know exactly what is going to happen.

“Yes. I checked. It’s not up there,” he responds, crazed now that I have only thought of one possible hiding place for such a precious item.

So I go through the list; in, on, under or behind the DVD case, DVD player or entertainment unit. Behind or down between the cushions on the couch, in the fireplace or underneath the Christmas tree.

No, it’s not there. It’s not anywhere. It’s gone indefinitely and life won’t be the same. Ever.

Not quite as traumatized by all of this, I plate supper, pour drinks and take cutlery from the clean dishes sitting in the dishwasher. I holler that supper is ready. I cut up Bridget’s and then head in to feed her.

Then I hear them. The lads have figured it out. The conspiracy theorists who live in my house have yet again reached a perfectly rational conclusion. They have received classified information from an unnamed man wearing a trench coat and hat in a vacant parking garage that; while I was in the bathroom Bridget must have taken the disk out of the Xbox, and thrown it in the garbage.

“Right. Come eat your supper, now- the two of you.” I say. Not nearly as Suzy homemakery as I could have.

But it’s no use. I hear them discussing the price of replacing the game that has been missing all of 5 minutes. I stand in the hallway to block the two of them from getting on their winter gear and heading out in -40 degree weather to dash to the nearest Wal-Mart before it closes.

“But it’s not here. Bridget threw it away!” they lament.

So I march into the living room, while my steaming chicken and rice sits on the counter, getting cold. I open up the glass doors that house the electronics and look on, under and behind them. The whole while, I hear both of them whine, like girls, ‘We already looked there-obviously, Bridget threw it away. There is no point in even looking.”

They are right. It makes much more sense to buy a new one than look for the one we already own. It’s only a week before Christmas. Money is so abundant that I have been blowing my nose in twenty dollar bills instead of Kleenex all week. It is a much better idea to buy a new one. So much sense if fact, that tomorrow, I will go to the West Edmonton Mall and park our truck in the Parkade and not take notice to which section I am in. Then I will scold Bridget for losing it, and go get a new one.

Determined, I put my hand up on the mantle. The mantle they were so annoyed that I suggested they look on because they had already thoroughly searched all four feet of it.

But amazingly, I feel something that doesn’t feel wooden. I feel something that slides across the mantle like freshly waxed skis on snow. When I see it, it’s shiny. The bounty is shiny, with a hockey player on the front and big letters that spell NHL 10.

I think I might start a business in tracking down lost things. I can track down missing persons who are sitting on their couch, or maybe art work that is still hanging on the walls of the owner. I can reunite dogs that are tied on in the backyard with their concerned owners in the kitchen.
Jamie however was made to apologize to Bridget for making such wild accusations. Hopefully, apologizing to a toddler will have taught him a lesson. Maybe tomorrow, when he can’t find his work shirts, hanging in his closet, he will know not to accuse her of wearing them to the bar and leaving them in a cab somewhere in New York City.

This is just a single example, from a random 20 minute snippet of my day that confirms my suspicion. My long standing suspicion that the reason men need such large televisions has nothing at all to do with their manhood; it has everything to do with their severely inferior eyesight.