A couple of weeks ago, the Biscuit and I parted ways. I feel okay about it, all things considered, but now I have to find a brand-new impressionable boy to train as the househusband on duty. The need to fill this vacancy occurred to me just yesterday when I fell, in agonizing slo-mo, off of a stepladder while attempting to change a ceiling bulb in the kitchen, and as the cat-food-bespeckled linoleum rushed up to meet me and my flailing limbs, I made a mental note to begin dating a former college-basketball player as soon as possible.

Yes, I need a househusband – not because I believe that men “should” do certain chores and women “should” do others, mind you, but because, frankly, I don’t want to do any of the chores, least of all the ones that require me to balance on the ball of one foot like the love child of Tantalus and Bob Vila, three screws clenched in my teeth and a scorching-hot light-fixture cover perched upside-down on my head like a glass pillbox hat, pretending not to notice that the people in the apartment across the way actually have money out on the table and have begun betting on whether I will bounce off the countertop first this time or plummet directly into the recycling bin, and until I figure out how to get my cut of that action, I’d like a man around the house, one with a modicum of coordination. And fine motor control. And the patience to sit quietly and read the entire instruction manual for every appliance I own. And medical training. The househusband doesn’t have to love me. The househusband just has to drop whatever he’s doing to open the Price Club-size jar of marinara.

The ideal househusband is both man and superman. The ideal househusband possesses finely-tuned hearing, and can distinguish between the “oh, for chrissake” that only means I can’t find my left sock and the more dire “oh, for chrissake” that means I have just jammed a fork into the coils of the toaster oven, or ignited the sleeve of my cardigan mid-stir-fry. The ideal househusband’s ear will hear the telltale creak that indicates the imminent collapse of an overloaded shelf in the closet, a shelf beneath which I have positioned myself sans protective headgear with the intent of storing one last hardcover book. My househusband will also have keen visual acuity, the better to spot – and kill without mercy – the millimeter-long spider that sent me screeching out into the hall. Where to find such a gifted soul?

Well, I’ve considered taking out an ad, but I wouldn’t hire just any tall guy with fire-safety training. Prospective househusbands would have to undergo sensory testing (“Please identify the following sound: ‘Zzzzzzip!’” “Uh – the sound of you getting into your haz-mat suit because you just saw a silverfish in the bathroom?” “Correct. Very impressive, Bob”). Next, applicants who survived the first round would face a battery of manual-dexterity tests, including but not limited to extracting an entire Venetian blind from the hose of the vacuum cleaner; disabling the smoke alarm with a balled-up dress sock; using a platform shoe as a hammer; and a little problem-solving exercise I like to call The Where It All Went Wrong Test, in which the househusband hopeful examines a piece of IKEA furniture that I built, identifies exactly where in the process I departed from the printed instructions and yawed into Picasso territory, disassembles the piece of furniture, and puts it back together correctly.

The househusband should also know first aid. The smallest sniffle, the shallowest paper cut, the weakest abdominal cramp will send me moaning to my couch, there to await death while leafing weakly through TV Guide, so the househusband’s therapeutic duties will consist largely of humoring me. But accidents do happen, especially to me, and in the event that I stab myself in the eye with a mascara brush, say, or give the vacuum-bag hatch too vigorous a tug and wind up coating myself with, and inhaling, the accumulated lint of several months, he should remain on alert.

In the final selection phase, I will determine whether or not the proposed househusband has the diplomatic credentials required for the job. You see, any househusband of mine will have to come up with new and exciting ways to point out the obvious without sounding condescending. Learning to say things like “I think you have to turn the machine on first” and “why don’t you try not hitting it and see if it works” and “that’ll look great, once we unbend it and fix the parts you broke” without a hint of inflection takes years of practice, and here many househusbands eliminate themselves from contention.

Admittedly, serving as my househusband doesn’t seem like the greatest deal in the world, but really, he doesn’t have to do that much – assassinate the occasional yucky bug, prevent me from getting a concussion while doing housework, that kind of thing. True, he’ll have to haul pieces of baggage so heavy they affect the tides through various airport terminals, but in return, he’ll have crackers-in-bed privileges in the house of a woman who loves “SportsCenter.”

You want the clicker? You got it!
Hired by the competition.

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