At cake this afternoon a colleague was telling me this long involved story about his family, which ended with his six year old son telling his mother she was a hero and giving her three cheers for cooking tacos. So my colleague ended by telling me that all I had to do to get my boys to cheer me was to cook tacos.
He was a bit non-plussed when I told him that I never did any of the cooking in our house. To the extent that I backtracked and mentioned cooking pasta occasionally (true, but only the assembly kind). None of my colleagues are deliberately sexist, but he clearly had a “mother = cooking” mindset for home life, even though, like him, I am the work outside the home parent in my household.
Not sure what the point of this story is (I’m procrastinating from the work I brought home this evening) but it is nice to subvert the dominant paradigm occasionally, even if in a subtle way.
Oh Jennifer! You’re such a feminist. 🙂
I like the use of the phrase ‘at cake’. That makes it pretty specific.
What does it mean, “at cake”?
We don’t have afternoon tea in our office, but when it’s someone’s birthday, we gather around the birthday cake, and have a chat and a piece of cake for 15 minutes. No speeches or other celebratory acknowledgement!