Carol’s Column

Housewives ordinary? Forget it!

I have been invited to run in the Spar Ladies' 10km race on April 24. Anyone who knows me will find this remarkable as I have always found any form of exercise frightening.

What intrigues me about this race is what Spar advertising manager Nick O'Brien said when announcing it. "Spar sees its involvement as giving something back to our target market, the ladies, the working housewife, if you like." He stressed the event wasn't for the Sonja Laxtons or the Elana Meyers.

"This is for the ordinary housewife, who would not normally get involved in such an activity. We would like to invite her, Mrs Ordinary Housewife, to get involved."

Ordinary? Mr O'Brien, I object. Perhaps the reason why Mrs Ordinary Housewife hasn't participated in such activities before is because Mrs Ordinary Housewife is, in an ordinary sort of a way, running her household, being chauffeur, nurse, accountant, chef, chief buyer, seamstress, lover, sporting advisor, academic mentor, psychologist.

That's of course while, more often than not, holding down a demanding job and competing in the work-place with men who are invariably paid higher salaries, promoted beyond their incompetence and are too busy to pop into the supermarket on the way home. But they have time for business lunches, golf, and then a session in the pub with the boys.

Mr O'Brien, my ordinary housewifely nostrils are quivering with rage. For in the past 25 or so years, I have made 3 000 000 peanut-butter and jam sandwiches, kissed 973 bruised kneecaps and covered 8 541 school books. And attended 570 swimming galas, 2 999 rugby matches, 367 netball matches and 345 hockey matches. I have changed enough nappies that, if joined, would stretch around the world twice. There is nothing ordinary about that.

Orchestrated snow

On September 10, 1980, I orchestrated snow in Johannesburg especially for my third youngest son's tenth birthday. Well, that's what he's believed all these years.

And on December 31, 1990, I won the record for upside-down skiing at Tiegnes in the French Alps when I skied for almost five kilometres without managing to get to my feet.

As a Mrs Ordinary Housewife I have learnt to bake health-loaf bread with crunch nuts and raisins because it prevents familial constipation. Like all my other ordinary sisters out there, I do extraordinary things with potatoes and mince to turn them into exotic dishes.

In the Oxford Dictionary, "ordinary" is defined as regular, customary, usual, commonplace.

This definition does not belong to any of the housewives of my acquaintance. They're all talented women, who, were they not so busy cooking and caring would make brilliant brain surgeons.

It was only yesterday morning that I asked my husband: "Do you think I'm ordinary?"

"Yes, and ugly, flatfooted and boring too," he said.

Can he be serious?

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