Underwear Boy – the mama’s boy

So Underwear Boy may well be the biggest mama’s boy I’ve met. He’s 25 years old, and I think if he had his way, his mom would still be doing everything for him, short of wiping his bum. Here’s a conversation we had that illustrates my point:

UB (while washing his dishes): It’s so stupid that I need to wash dishes and cook for myself and do my own laundry. None of my friends have to do any of this stuff.
Me: Who does all that stuff for your friends?
UB: Their mom.
Me: They all still live at home?
UB: Of course – until they get married and then their wife will do that stuff. It’s not fair that I need to do everything for myself.

Oh, the injustice! And while he did cook for himself, wash his dishes (after there were so many dirty ones on his desk that he couldn’t find a spot to work), and do his laundry (kind of) – that’s about it. And I say he “kind of” did his laundry, because he’d wash a load, then leave it in the machine for a week, then finally remember it (generally because he ran out of clean clothes) and hang it out to dry, where he would forget about it for another week, and since he never used clothespins, his clothes were generally scattered across the lawn by the time he remembered them. And he probably took 75% of his laundry home for mommy to do. He never once took out the garbage, even though he generated enough to fill his own personal landfill. In fact, if the garbage bin wasn’t in its normal spot, he would just put his rubbish on the floor. If he spilled something on the floor, I’m sure the thought didn’t even occur to him that he should clean it up. And if the thought did occur, he never actually acted on it.

And aside from a basic lack of understanding about cleanliness, he also had a shocking lack of know-how about basic things. For example, he had no idea how to tie a tie. He always had daddy do it, and he came to Dubbo with a stack of ties that his dad had tied for him. One day he ran out of tied ties, so he asked Tamara to tie a tie for him. Somewhat appalled at his ignorance, she printed out directions from the internet and told him to learn to do it himself. He also had no idea how to pack when he moved out (because no doubt mom had packed the car when he moved to Dubbo). So out of desperation, at 9:00 the night before he was leaving, he went to the grocery store and came back with dozens of green bags – inside plastic bags! The next morning, the whole living room was filled with this sea of little green bags that he had packed everything in. And a few sheets in which he had tied-up his clothes.

I’ve decided to use UB as an example if we have kids and they ask why they need to do chores or learn how to do something – “Because I once lived with someone who was 25 years old and had no idea how to (insert anything here).”