He was responsible for two things.
For their daughter’s fourth birthday party, a New Jersey mom gave her husband what she thought was a simple task when he asked how he could help.
“Oh my (expletive) God,” she tells TODAY.com. “Never again.”
In an Instagram video, Jessica, who has two children with Bill, a police officer, shares the story of what happened next with the kind of comic timing only a thick Brooklyn accent can deliver.
She told him, “Make sure you mow the lawn, pick up the tables from our friend’s house, and set the tables up for me. I’ve got it from there.”
As you probably guessed, Bill didn’t exactly execute the plan.
“Let me show you what his contribution was for this party,” she said, and the video cut to a truck hauling a dumpster being backed into her driveway, its beeping echoing in the background.
“A dump-stah! A dump-stah!” she exclaimed in the clip, “To clean out the basement. The unfinished basement that nobody is going to be in. Not a single person is going to be in my basement.”
“And you know what the best part about this is? He says to me, ‘Make sure you go through the house and collect stuff to throw in this dump-stah before they pick it up today,” she continued, incredulous at the audacity.
As Jessica noted in the clip, if she’s the one making piles for the trash haul, who is going to be prepping for the party? Clearly, Bill hadn’t thought that one through.
Across the internet, parents could immediately relate to the spectacle of well-meaning dads contributing in ways that are … less than helpful.
- “It’s actually pretty impressive he’s not doing anything helpful and also putting unexpected things on your plate.”
- “It’s amazing they complain that they just want us to tell them what to do. And then they do this when we tell them *exactly* what to do.”
- “We gotta start putting them in the dumpster.”
- “My husband likes to leaf blow the asphalt before people come over … when there are no leaves.”
- “Omg why r they like thisssssss. Instead of making less work for u, makes more.”
“I’m a lunatic about parties, and this was total stress overload,” Jessica tells TODAY. “We were having kids from her class — and their parents — at our house for the first time. And I’m one of those people who makes my house look like nobody lives here. I’m a perfectionist.”
Ultimately, she says, Bill came through. He not only finished everything she had asked of him but also picked up all the catering.
According to Jessica, her husband, who doesn’t use social media, had no idea that she had made a video about the dumpster or that it had gone viral until TODAY.com reached out. He still doesn’t understand the fuss.
“I read something recently that said women are psychotic about the inside of the house because it’s a representation of them, whereas men are outside weed-whacking and blowing debris in the streets because the outdoors is a reflection of them,” she explains. “Hello! We’re wired differently.”
The party was a success and as Jessica wrote in her Instagram caption, she even appreciated the dumpster, eventually: “I will say, in the end, I was thrilled to get rid of all the s— we did.”
