Male versus Female

04/19/2004

15 PIECES OF ADVICE TO BE PASSED ON TO YOUR DAUGHTERS


1. Don't imagine you can change a man -- unless he's in \diapers.


2. What do you do if your boyfriend walks-out? You shut the door.


3. If they can put a man on the moon -- they should be able to put them
all up there.


4. Never let your man's mind wander-- it's too little to be out alone.


5. Go for younger men. You might as well -- they never mature anyway.


6. Men are all the same -- they just have different faces so that you
can tell them apart.


7. Definition of a bachelor; a man who has missed the opportunity to
make some woman miserable.


8. Women don't make fools of men -- most of them are the do-it-yourself
types.


9. Best way to get a man to do something, is to suggest he is too old
for it.


10. Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener.


11. If you want a committed man, look in a mental hospital.


12. The children of Israel wandered around the desert for 40 years. Even
in biblical times, men wouldn't ask for directions.


13. If he asks what sort of books you're interested in, tell him checkbooks.


14. Remember a sense of humor does not mean that you tell him jokes; it
means that you laugh at his.


15. Sadly, all men are created equal.
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Yes, Kaitlyn, the above is one of those ubiquitous email missives that float the Internet to the complete amusement of, well, of the entire world.

It is, Kaitlyn, funny. And throughout the humorous verbiage, there is, as always in the mirth, solid nuggets of truth.

Your grandmother, Kaitlyn, has “had” plenty of men in her life. Depending on your age, you may interpret the word “had” in any fashion that you desire. For now, the statistics show that grandmother has been married four times and that’s enough right there.

In some later chapter I shall go into more detail about my many marriages and reasons forthwith. I suspect you’ll discover the tale not as sinister as one might imagine.

So go with me on this, Kaitlyn, your grandmother knows men.

Oddly, I still like them.

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. No, wait. THAT was the hahahaha funny logo during my hay day as a Woman’s Libber.

Indeed, Kaitlyn, grandmother once sported a kelly green hat and “marched” on Washington the day Ronald Reagan got inaugurated as President of the United States of America.

Actually the marchers only included me and another ersatz liberated woman. And the only marching we did was to wonder around the capitol while lugging two five gallon buckets which we used to stand on when we wanted to see what was going on at street level. Beats me, Kaitlyn, but the call went out for women across America to emerge en masse in the nation’s capital that day. We were to wear green for some reason I forget and in theory, the massive columns of green dressed females along the new President’s inaugural route was supposed to show this guy that we were a force to be reckoned with.

So only me and the other lady show up but we had fun anyway.

But such was your grandmother’s youthful passion for the social tide of the era-that of feminine liberation.

There was a period of time in my life that I hated men. Granted that “hated” is a strong word and likely not really the case. Yet I distinctly recall a resentment of men, their power to hurt innocent women, their male chauvinism. A term, Kaitlyn, that was wildly popular during the era.

Beyond equal pay for equal work there really was no great pressing issue to women’s liberation. Indeed the entire nation rejected the notion of another amendment to the constitution granting women something called “full equality” when women already had full equality under the law in the Civil Rights act.

I suppose there was a subtle change in public opinion on the role of women and their place in society. It was then, and still is, a society where the vast majority of women worked outside the home. Thus they should receive equal pay for equal work, shouldn’t be yoked with the oppression of all things domestic in their dual roles, and should not be punished for the medical condition of pregnancy.

In fact, Kaitlyn, mighty AT&T denied me pay for the birth of my child, who would be your mother. When the guy down the aisle got six week’s pay per the company’s disability plan for his pulled groin muscle. I took off five weeks to birth my child and recover from same. Why shouldn’t I be paid for this as with any other disability?

I was eventually paid for that five weeks Kaitlyn, via a class action suit that took sixteen years to settle as that was the age of the “baby” that was the reason for the suit.

I was a liberal then, Kaitlyn, and my arguments above might roughly make the case for that era of more liberal thought. For now, I’m over that man thing.

Because a woman who has been married four times quite obviously WANTS to be married, Kaitlyn. For some it takes a bit of fine tuning is all.