There's Nobody Else To Do This (ahem) Stuff But Me

Into every grownup's life this moment must fall: the moment when you realize that whether you want to or not, you're fully responsible for taking care of something. And there's nobody else to do it but you.

I'm not talking about big stuff - like parenthood, letting your mother move in with you, or taking over the family business. I'm talking about the little daily stuff we'd all rather ignore, like taking out the recycling.

Here's an example: the liquid soap dispenser at our kitchen sink broke last week. It just stopped pumping soap up. And for a good three days I regularly went to the sink, attempted to get some soap, remembered it wasn't working, felt frustrated it wasn't fixed yet, and walked to the bathroom where there was a working soap dispenser.

It never occurred to me that I should do something about this. For three full days.

And here's the kicker: I wasn't even expecting Cliff to resolve the issue, because he was out of town. Replacing the soap dispenser was clearly my responsibility - who else was going to do it, the four year-old? - and yet I just kept looking at the busted soap bottle with disappointment, and then heading to the bathroom sink.

I'd like to think I'm not alone in this. I know I'm not alone in my family, as I've visited a certain family member's house at a one month interval and found the same junk mail sitting on a side table on the second visit as on the first.

This tendency to overlook obvious responsibility can trickle down to parenting. A babysitter once had to prompt me to teach Sam to put his shoes on himself. Twice a day I sat down on the floor to slip Sam's feet into his Velcro sneakers, and it never once occurred to me that a three year old could really do this for himself.

Marriage compounds this. Even after a task comes consciously to mind as clearly needing to be done, you can still stall a few days by waiting for your spouse to do it. 

Like right now, the red indicator light on our home phone is blinking to indicate we have a voicemail. For some reason, I hate checking voicemail. It was blinking all afternoon as I sat at my desk less than two feet from the phone: it truly didn't occur to me to do something about that. Now I'm just hoping Cliff takes care of it. In fact, perhaps this entire post is just an elaborate way to drop a hint ...

My grownup commitment for the day is to notice some things that need to be done and do them. Not big stuff. Just things like getting rid of the expired medicines in the bathroom cabinet. Because whether I like it or not, I'm the grownup here and somebody's got to do this stuff.