As many of you might recall, my neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Neanderthal, live across the hallway. Despite being in the vulnerable age group, not being digitally literate, and having a dumb phone as their sole means of communication, they had managed to survive confinement with relative success. However, in Phase 3 during a visit to the house of one of their children, Mrs. Neanderthal fell and broke her leg. The last time I mentioned her, she was in the hospital, another indirect victim of the coronavirus pandemic.
A week ago she was released from the hospital to recover at home. Her hip has not healed well and she is not mobile. Her daughter came from a northern province for a week to take care of her. This was both good and bad. It was good because for one week, Mrs. Neanderthal received the care and attention that she felt that she richly deserved. However, it was bad because she expected this attention to go on forever. It is easy to become used to the good things in life.
I have known the Neanderthals for a long time. When I first met them, I had been married for about one year and had just moved into the building. At that time, the apartment next door to theirs was occupied by Mrs. Neanderthal’s crotchety parents. The Neanderthals are a primitive species, but their parents belonged to a species so superarchaic that on the evolutionary scale, they have never even received a name.
The Superarchaics expected Mrs. Neanderthal to be their unpaid slave, which indeed she was for 30 long years until both went to their final reward (to the relief of everyone). For three long decades, Mrs. Neanderthal had been expected to clean, cook, and finally care for her parents when both became bedridden invalids, who lingered for more time than anyone thought possible. Doubtlessly, God was postponing their demise as long as He could because one can only put up with so much, even in Heaven.
From what I observed, the Superarchaics expected this level of domestic service as their due and never once thanked their caregiver, who silently and uncomplainingly catered to their every whim day and night. I have always been in awe of Mrs. Neanderthal’s capacity of sacrifice since it was something that I would never have been capable of.
Over the years, I have reminded her that times have changed and when we eventually fall ill (as one day we must), it would be a mistake to expect our children to be there to wait on us hand and foot as she had done with her parents. She has always sagely nodded her head in agreement, but inside, she was evidently hoping for something quite different.
The other day, when I went to visit, I saw that Mrs. Neanderthal had a very glum face. Her daughter had departed and returned to her family up north. No amount of emotional blackmail had been able to make her stay. Mrs. Neanderthal was left alone with her husband, who has no domestic skills. As the reader will recall, it is his staunch belief that any man who performs household tasks will eventually suffer acute penis detachment. Mr. Neanderthal has always been catered to by his wife in the same way as she served her parents. As the Man of the House, he believes that it is his due.
Nevertheless, the panorama is currently bleak for manly breadwinners because now Mrs. Neanderthal is totally bedridden. She cannot move her leg, much less stand up. She has to wear diapers, which someone has to change. She has to be served her meals in bed.
When I went to visit, Mr. Neanderthal took me aside and told me in a desperate whisper that if only his wife could manage to get to the bathroom by herself, he would be able to manage the rest….maybe. Both Neanderthals suffer from a phobia of body fluids and natural body processes. From what I have observed over the years, the earthy dimensions of the body have always been unmentionable. They rarely talk about ‘those things’.
This is reflected in a story that Mrs. Neanderthal once told me of their honeymoon. After five years of chaste engagement (nothing beyond a few kisses), the Neanderthals were at last permitted to wed. They were finally given the green light to engage in frenetic and rapturous copulation.
So, after their wedding banquet, they boarded a train to Madrid where her virginity would be disposed of and popped like so much bubble wrap. During the trip, Mrs. Neanderthal in her modesty was embarrassed about going to the restroom. If she went to release her natural body fluids (she had drunk a bit at the wedding banquet), Mr. Neanderthal would realize that she was not the ethereal damsel of his dreams. He would see that she was human. As any reader of romantic novels knows, ethereal damsels never urinate much less defecate. It is not part of their job description.
So she did not go to the bathroom during the whole trip, and in the 1960s, there were no fast trains. By the time that she arrived in Madrid, the hotel had to call a doctor because she was in great pain. The doctor came and probably thinking that this was a new landmark in human stupidity, had to use a catheter to empty her bladder.
As a result, their wedding night, which was supposedly going to be the supreme culmination of five years of repressed passion, was just as chaste as their years of engagement.
However, after two days, she recovered sufficiently from her bladder ailment, and married life finally began. She confided to me that she had never understood why people make such a big deal over sex. In her opinion, it isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. She is proud of the fact that in over 50 years of marriage, she has never seen Mr. Neanderthal completely nude nor has he ever seen her in an unclothed state either.
However, in their twilight years, this situation has changed drastically because now Mr. Neanderthal is obliged to cater to her and all of her body fluids. He is thus forced to see (and clean) all of the orifices that he has not had the occasion to contemplate during their five decades of matrimony.
This is a small example of how the coronavirus confinement has changed life for all of us in the most unexpected ways. The majority of us have been able to adapt and become used to contexts that six months ago would have been unsustainable.
Inflexibility is never a good thing since it makes survival difficult on the evolutionary scale. For that reason, I would not make any bets on Mr. Neanderthal’s ability to evolve. The family will probably start looking for a nursing home.
