Early Bird My Foot!

Dear Dad,

               You know how I know that spring is here?  It’s the trail of ants in my kitchen.  I came home from work today and my wife informed me that we have ants.  We get them every year.  I spray the perimeter of the house with a mild insecticide and the problem goes away.  It’s easy but tedious work that always turns into a day of honey-do’s.

                Today was my birthday though, and I didn’t want to work so I told the missus what I always tell her.  “Honey, I’ll take care of it on the very next nice weekend.”  I of course was referring to the weather, and since it snowed today, I figured I had bought myself some time.  The problem is I used this same excuse at least twenty times this winter.  The list of things I am going to have to do on the next sunny Saturday is getting pretty extensive.  I sat down and began devising a plan to further avoid all this work.

                Don’t get me wrong I love plying the handyman trade all around the house.  All men do, but we like to do it on our own terms.  Men don’t work well with deadlines.  I like to just wake up one day and decide, TODAY I AM GOING TO CLEAN THE GUTTERS.  When it’s my idea I have fun doing it.  Don’t believe me?  Think about it.  I get to climb on the roof, get dirty, live dangerously, and of course I have a high pressure water sprayer.  It has so much power that last year I had to replace a small section of gutter.  It was AWESOME.

               As I sat pondering this dilemma my eyes fell upon an old ‘Bass Pro’ catalog.  Quickly becoming distracted by the colorful lures and deer antler shaped furniture I drifted to sleep.  Two things occurred to me in my sleep.  The first is that I am finally old enough to enjoy an afternoon nap with out being hung over and the second thing was the simple solution to my problem.  As it turns out I realized that all men have this exact same problem and invented the fix for it years ago. 

               Fish bite ALL DAY long.  They bite all night long too.  All men know this, it’s why fishing trips last so long.  No self respecting man gives up fishing at ten in the morning because it’s not early anymore.  Hundreds of years ago, retired men working Saturdays in their wives’ flower gardens got together and created the legend - “The early bird gets the worm.”  They used this slogan to dupe women into thinking that if their husbands didn’t leave at the crack of dawn then the fishing trip would be ruined.  It’s perfect!  Why it works I don’t understand.  Birds eat worms all day long, and the word fish isn’t in the saying at all.  I guess older generations were smarter, because those guys made it work.  All winter long we promise to fix the chain link fence and spread the mulch.  We say we’ll spray for pests and do the spring garage cleaning, and we say we’ll do all these things on the first nice weekends.  Women are natural caretakers so they don’t really want us out in crappy weather anyway.  The ruse works.  Then on that fateful sunny Saturday, husbands everywhere slip out of the house before the sun (and the wife) comes up.

                Sorry dear, the early bird gets the worm, and then we don’t come back until dinner.  After dinner it’s dark.  Can’t work in the dark.  Sunday is church, brunch and visit the in-laws.  Thank you old men from history for being so dang smart.  Last weekend I actually spent a partly sunny day organizing my fishing gear and building a rack for my rods and reels.  I was way too busy doing that to get out and do any other work.  Now I am fully prepared to get on with some procrastination and avoidance.

               Dad, you might want to kill me for putting our secrets in print but the message to get across here is this.  Ladies need to let us think the work is our Idea and not only will it get done faster but we’ll have fun doing it.  Oh sure there will be the occasional emergency room trip caused by some over zealous power tool usage but the work will get done.  Don’t assign us work because we are way to good at avoiding it.  We will create a story so powerful it becomes a saying that stands the test of time.  WE ARE THE MEN!!
Early bird my foot, come on!  You actually bought that crap!  Now don’t go getting righteous on us ladies, I believe there is another saying about getting to the retail outlet store early also, because all the good deals will be gone.  Come on!  We’ve been in retail clothing stores.  They have four thousand of each shirt, skirt and flowered flip flop on the racks plus extras stored in the back.  Tit for tat.

               Now while I don’t mind ruining lies for you, I would appreciate it if my wife never read this letter.  I really do have some fishing to do.  Thanks.

               Love,
                        Your scheming low down sneaky son.