Good boys get a treat

We were in a pre-wedding marriage course. There were about a dozen young couples trying hard to simultaneously sit in each other’s laps. And then there were the oldies, like us, who were there to complete the paperwork. “Sex,” the zealous Catholic lay person announced, “should never be used as a reward or a threat.”

I laugh now when I think about it. If only I could travel back in time and laugh in his face. “Mate,” I’d tell him, “no one’s taking the bins out because they might get a Kit Kat.” Sad but true - sex is the reason men do everything, especially after they’ve had kids. Well, most men. Men with utes are exempt. Their wives adore them.

Look in any park early on a Saturday morning and you’ll see it’s almost exclusively filled with men wheeling prams. And why are parks filled with men and prams on a Saturday morning? It’s because they’re setting themselves up for Saturday night. At least, that’s what the gloomy ones are doing.

See, there are no guarantees. Men know this. They know they could well be getting wet socks from dewy grass and standing around watching junior play on the slippery-dip with no immediate dividend. That’s why they look so sad.

Then there are the happy dads. They walk around grinning like fools because they’re paying for Friday night plus they know there’s a chance, however slight, that they could qualify as carry-over champions depending on how much dad-work they do during Saturday. Dads will do almost anything on a Saturday morning in the hopes of what lies ahead of them Saturday night.

Take the kids to weekend footy? My pleasure, darling. We’re happy to do it. Dads at weekend sporting fixtures are the happiest men on earth. They congregate and chat and smile because they know, unless they stuff it up, all of them are going to score. A trip to McDonald’s for lunch, some takeaway for tea and you’re as good as there.

Women, on the other hand, are not happy to be at weekend sporting fixtures. They stare sullenly into newspapers and think of ways to punish the bloke who’s supposed to be there instead. And how does she punish him? Spit in his food? Of course not. And that explains the dads you see pushing prams in parks on Sunday mornings. They’re doing time for mistakes they made on Saturday - perhaps for failing to attend a weekend sporting fixture - and they’re not happy chaps at all.

In fact, Sunday morning pram pushers are never celebrating a Saturday night. Those blokes are home basking in an afterglow and a plate of bacon and eggs. Your Sunday morning pram pusher is in the tenth circle of husband hell. He’s not entirely sure how he got there and he has no idea how he’s getting out. He could give his missus a kidney and it wouldn’t matter. He won’t be forgiven until she’s good and ready and he might as well get used to it.

I know all this because men talk. As for the women - I have no idea what they do or where they go or why. The ones I see are doing those group boxing classes and they don’t say good morning. See you in the park. Hopefully on a Saturday.

From an article in The Courier-Mail.