Who Wears the Pants in Your House?

Having family come to spend the weekend always makes for an interesting time.  Doesn’t matter if the visitors are family members you enjoy spending time with or family members that, even if you don’t verbalize it, you feel confident should be sporting a new white jacket that features long sleeves tied securely in the back.  (For the record, I do not have, nor have I ever had, any members of my family, extended family, family by marriage, or extended family by marriage that fit the second description!)

The oddities start long before the visitors even arrive, when your wife insists on cleaning areas of the house you wouldn’t even know existed if you hadn’t watched her clean them last time family came to visit.  These areas include the back of the fridge, behind the couch, and behind the knick knacks.

There’s also an abundance of good food available in the house.  The store-brand potato chips make way for the name-brand specialty chips and canned green beans are replaced fresh string beans.

But probably the most noticeable difference, noticeable to the fly on the wall, would be that you can no longer walk around in your underwear.  Where a typical Sunday morning might include not actually putting on pants until the second round of NFL games, when family comes to visit, all of a sudden the wife insists that shouldn’t leave the bedroom unless you’re fully clothed. 

If everything is done correctly, the visiting family members will never know anything is amiss.  They assume that you always eat fresh veggies and name brand chips, have zero mites of dust anywhere in the house, and always wear pants and a shirt at the breakfast table.  And after they leave, and you sit back and reflect on the weekend that was, you realize that come Christmas when you are the visitors rather than the hosts, you’ll be on the receiving end of all these amenities.  Suddenly pants are a good thing!