Guv’nor Vs Cleaner

The Internal Culture War Of Walking My Dog

This morning as I walked my Chihuahua, Flynn, he circled a large cedar, squatted into position and with blissful reckless abandon, took a satisfying crap on a patch of grass. As he did so, I noticed fewer than six inches away, a stone-cold pile of feces, deposited by a neighboring dog. Thus, began Brainy:

I dutifully but begrudgingly bagged up the poop and deposited it in the nearest bin.

There are around a million and a half dogs in Los Angeles County, where I live, which means that without stopping to ask why other people’s dog shit should be my responsibility, I face this dilemma every morning and every evening.

What it comes down to is Middle Eastern Brainy.

I grew up in England with stereotypical Middle Eastern immigrant parents whom I saw as caricatures.

If you had a pair of bollocks, you governed. If you had a pair of tits, you cleaned. And though I’ve been an independent adult for more than thirty years, it’s easy to slip into the default position of cleaner.

While cleaning up other people’s dog turds is undoubtedly contributing to the health of the planet, it sets me off on an unhealthy path.

In my precious free moments from ten-hour remote workdays, I’ll catch myself on autopilot, brushing crumbs I didn’t make, off the counter, pulling hair, not my own, out of the drain, and cleaning up others’ snot rags. This is not to say that I can’t sometimes clean up after my kids or my husband – he certainly cleans up enough of my rubbish, but repeated behavior rapidly becomes habit and eventually, responsibility. Without noticing, I become Cleaner, not only at home, but at work, where I’ll jump in to correct others’ mistakes until very quickly, the bulk of my day is consumed by other people’s shit. And suddenly, I feel like my mother used to look.

It’s exactly in this instance that I’m grateful I’m in menopause because the increase in cortisol has an interesting positive side effect. It brings out British Brainy, only less polite.

Given the kind of conditioning with which I was raised, I appreciate both menopause and British Brainy, for balancing out the Middle Easterner in me. The very sound of crinkling plastic as I pull a dog-poop bag out of my pocket, elicits a demand to know who I’m going to be today.

Is it Guv’nor, or Cleaner?