We can't help it. It's a guy thing.

A little gem of self-generated wisdom for a Saturday: All men are guys, but not all guys are men. Male yes, but not necessarily men in the sense of being industrious, responsible, respectable, courageous, reverent and gentlemanly human beings. You get my drift. Joe Sixpack is assuredly a guy, but only rarely a ‘man.’ The obverse of this is, however, that all men, probably even the Pope or the Dalai Lama lapse into being ‘guys’ if the circumstances are right.

Get the Swiss Guard and the faithful retainers out of this chambers and the Pope doffs the garb and dons Levis and a sweatshirt with the motto: “I am the Boss of You!” He maybe then cracks a cool one (Rome gets mighty warm in the summer) and flicks on his favorite reality show: Born to Go to Hell, in which assorted sinners (adulterers, murderers, sodomites, thieves, etc.) vie to show their sins in action. The panel then decides whose sins are the most revolting, and relegates failed participants to Purgatory rather than actual Hell. The winner will be the one sentence to eternal damnation, or two weeks with Celine Dion in Vegas at the end of the season.

A similar thing happens to me when I am outside scrutiny. No, I don’t really go to Hell (well, I used to, but that’s a story for another time), but I do revert to being a guy nearly the moment my wife’s car is out of the driveway.

I don’t mean to suggest I’m a slob or uncaring, because I don’t think I am. In fact, back in my ‘inter-marriage’ days I was known for keeping a pretty neat and inviting bachelor pad. I even used to buy flowers for a dining table vase. There were no piles of newspapers lying around, and my dishes were always neatly stacked in the dishwasher – where they’d sit dirty for a week until I had enough of a load to justify turning it on, or if I ran out of dishes.

All looked quite lovely – as long as nobody looked in the crud room, which was the second bedroom. That was a cluttered mess of stuff I had never quite found a place for. The cat liked sleeping in there because he could obscure himself under boxes, piles of clothes, and so forth. It was like an adventure park for him. But, the crud room was OK because nobody, and especially a female houseguest, was ever invited to enter its portals.

Anyway, Wendy was just away for two weeks working in another town, and I felt the house looked pretty darn good pending her return. Dishes were washed and no newspapers were strewn about. Yet, when she arrived back yesterday she wasn’t in the house for five minutes before she’d picked up a dishrag and began wiping down counters, muttering, “this is dirty,” under her breath. Hmm, I thought I had wiped it down, but I guess I had missed that spot. Otherwise, though, nothing much was amiss. Beds were made, and a modicum of dusting had been attempted.

You see, what happens when a man is alone is that he can revert to a wonderful world of no restrictions. Consequently meals are consumed in front of the TV, the cat’s dish gets encrusted with dried food – he doesn’t care because he’s a guy cat – and his litter box gets a trifle pungent. Oh yeah, the litter box. Well, that’s not so much of a problem since it usually announces its entirely-too-fragrant state all by itself. Otherwise, dishes can be left to soak for hours and hours in the sink until the water grows cold and then the sink can merely be drained and new hot water can be run. By that time they’ve virtually washed themselves and virtually or literally no scrubbing is demanded. Following that, the dishes can be piled on the sideboard to air dry while I go back to catch Jeopardy.

The ‘guy’ nature of guys, Wendy says is that they don’t notice things that women instinctively do. They were trained by their mothers to be fastidious and, in most cases, that impulse never leaves. My ex-wife (who was a neat-freak of the most anal sort) told me once that she always felt her mother breathing down her neck if anything was askew in the house. Consequently, nothing was ever askew. I once suggested to her that nobody has ever lain on their deathbed worrying if their house was untidy.

“I would,” she replied.

I believed her.

However, I got the residual from that relationship in that when I was living on my own, I invariably felt my ex breathing down my neck when I was being too ‘guy-like’ in my housekeeping. But, I guess that has started to wane a bit with the passage of time. However, I think any backsliding on my part can be attributed to Wendy for not being strident enough in the realm of “a place for everything and everything in its place.” So, if I’m reverting, she can only blame herself.

I can’t help it. I’m just a guy.