After Thanksgiving dinner, the hostess asked everyone to please stack their dishes and bring them into the kitchen.
I started to stand up — not to stack dishes because my wife had already picked up my dishes — but just to stretch my legs, when my dad, who was sitting next to me, put his hand on my arm and whispered, “Don’t get up. That’s woman’s work.”
I said, “I’m just getting up to stretch.”
“Don’t move,” he said.
My dad, like a lot of men his age, has old school views on gender roles.
Earlier in the evening, my mom was saying she’d read that women control 60 percent of the wealth in America.
“That’s all right,” my dad said, “because we control the women.”
Compare that to one of my nephews, who says things like “I’m nobody’s patsy,” then turns to his wife and says, “Isn’t that right, honey?”