The wings are good so it’s cool, right?

A college friend – let’s call him Bob – posted on facebook how proud he is that a former student is going to be on the Hooters calendar.

Another college friend – Steph – and I – are trying to explain to Bob why this is not exactly an accomplishment.

Bob thinks we are

1. attacking the young woman who will be on the calendar and

2. jealous because we would never have been hired at Hooters.

Steph and I have tried to explain that we support this young woman doing what she needs to do but that we think that Hooters is gross and the men who go there are gross and the system is gross and that we would like to see a world where women are celebrated for their accomplishments and not for their looks.

Bob maintains that getting onto a calendar is an accomplishment.

Oh Bob.

---

I was talking to a teacher friend of mine. I told her that Bob was proud that a former student was going to be on the Hooters calendar.

“WHAT?” she asked.

I repeated myself. “He’s proud that a former student is going to be on the Hooters calendar.”

“I thought that’s what you said but I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “He’s a teacher and he’s proud that a former student is on the Hooters calendar?”

“Yes.”

“Good God.”

---

There is an entire category of eateries called “breastaurants.”

Yes, Hooters is in this category. I think they invented it.

---

A VP at a former job couldn’t understand why I was not happy at the idea of having a work meeting at a Hooters.

“But their wings are really good!” he protested.

This is the argument men always seem to pull out of their pocket about Hooters: BUT THE WINGS!

As if there is no other place in the world that could possibly have decent wings? As if no other restaurant could master this chicken part that used to be considered a garbage part?

As if it’s not all about the breasts? The human ones?

I tried to explain that fully-clothed women are not necessarily comfortable in an environment that exploits scantily-clad ones.

He still didn’t get it.

Then I asked, “Do you want your little girl to work there when she gets older?”

The blood drained from his face.

His eyes closed.

He exhaled slowly through his mouth.

“Oh,” he said.

“Oh. I think I see what you mean.”

---

Why does it have to be personal for men?

Why does it have to be their mother or sister or wife or daughter being treated badly for them to get it?

Why can’t it be any girl or woman being treated badly for them to understand?

---

I was a cocktail waitress at a dive bar over winter break during college. A man – an old man, like my dad’s age – grabbed my butt. I was so shocked that I said nothing in the moment.

But after several minutes, I gathered my courage and marched up to him.

I don’t remember my exact words, but I said something to the effect of, “Don’t do that again!” or “How dare you!”

He answered, “But you looked so cute!” laughed, and turned away.

My anger was cute to him.

His dismissiveness made me angrier.

“How would you feel if someone treated your daughter that way?” I demanded.

He laughed again.

“I don’t have a daughter,” he replied.

I didn’t know what to say to that.

And then I did.

“Well IF YOU DID HAVE A DAUGHTER.”

Because clearly just the higher moral principle of DON’T TOUCH SOMEONE ELSE’S BODY WITHOUT PERMISSION could not be invoked. We can’t expect that of people, can we?

He had the grace to look ashamed and hand me a twenty.

Which I took.

I am still not ashamed that I took his money.

He needed to pay some kind of price.

---

Bob said I was bothered because I know I could never have been hired at Hooters.

He’s right – I never would have been hired there. I wasn’t pretty or shapely enough for Hooters.

But that’s not the part that bothers me. I have been keenly aware of where I stand relative to other girls and women on the looks scale since I was a little girl. I think all women are aware of that. I am well used to that fact by now.

The part that bothers me is that we live in a system where that’s how girls and women are judged.

And that Bob doesn’t see that that’s a problem.

---

Men go to Hooters to leer at these beautiful young women.

And they think these young women like them.

Yeah.

I really do think they think that the women like them.

Sit with that for a second.

They think that the women who are paid to be there and paid to be nice to the customers so that the customers will continue to spend money on beer and WINGS actually find the men attractive.

As if.

I do not blame the women who work there. It’s probably good money. I made good money when I was a cocktail waitress. I made more money when I wore skirts than when I wore pants, so I bet the very pretty, very shapely Hooters waitresses with their awful scanty uniforms make way more tips than I ever did.

I do not blame Hooters waitresses for optimizing their incomes within a crummy system.

I do not blame them for playing a game within the existing boundaries.

But the men?

The men who go there?

Who tell themselves that it’s about the food?

Who tell themselves that the waitresses like them?

The men – the men who sit in church on Sunday – the men who are elders in these very same churches (churches that would condemn female congregants who worked at Hooters I bet) – who call themselves Good Men – who convince themselves that what they are doing is harmless?

They are part of and are perpetuating an evil system. A system they could opt out of and even help dismantle.

Does that make them evil? I mean – THE WINGS ARE GOOD.

With age comes memories and the realization that so many things I did were so bizarre

Oh y’all I am cringing thinking about how, after I had visited my friend B for a weekend and her husband had insisted we go clothes and shoe shopping together because B never did anything nice for herself, I sent her a box of clothes I wasn’t wearing anymore.

I was thinking of it in terms of “We used to be roommates and didn’t we swap contents of our closets back then? I mean I totally share clothes with my sister!”

But the part I forgot was I HAVE AWFUL TASTE and any sharing was done from B and my sister to me, not in the other direction.

---

When I say I have awful taste, I mean it.

When I was in junior high and high school, anything my mom (who is an amazing seamstress) didn’t sew for me, I sewed myself. My pants wardrobe consisted of about a dozen pairs of polyester double-knit slacks with elastic waistbands in colors ranging from bright orange – which was translucent enough that the flowers on my underpants were visible – to mud brown to lime green.

My mom had found a remnant sale and had gotten a bunch of pieces for 25 cents each.

My mother knew how to spend wisely.

I made shirts to go with these pants and my one or two pairs of jeans. Not windowpane jeans or the other cool jeans, but regular ones from Sears. I was very proud of my shirts – I made western-style blouses with plaid fabric that I matched at the seams and with piping on the yoke. For those who don’t sew, it’s very hard to match patterns and it’s very hard to put in piping.

I also made those blouses with the ruffles on the front. Ruffles are also difficult to do properly.

My favorite shirt was a t-shirt with black and white trains on it – I wore that with the orange pants.

And I had made myself a jumpsuit with green krinkle cloth.

Do not doubt me when I say I have awful taste.

---

I did not improve when I got to college. My mom gave me $100 to shop for college clothes and I still remember what I bought. Even if fashion had been valued at my school, these would not have been the proper items:

• A green Izod polo
• A green, pink, and yellow plaid blazer – it looked very preppy
• Ralph Lauren jeans
• I don’t remember the rest, but I’m sure it was a bunch of beige sweaters because that’s how I rolled.

I also sewed several Hawaiian shirts and made those shorts that were like diapers that tied at the waist.

And reader, I wore those shorts. I wore them with pride.

---

In my first job out of college, I wore the uniform: a navy blue suit with a white or a pink blouse and those stupid little bow ties.

I did not know that to get wrinkles out of an all-cotton blouse, I needed to use starch. I did not know this until a kind co-worker asked me one day, “Are you – using starch when you iron? Because that blouse sure has a lot of wrinkles.”

My mother had not taught this secret of starching to me, for which I am sincerely grateful. I mean it. My mother has never been about “This is what a woman does. Women iron and women starch.”

My father also had not taught this skill to me. He did, however, teach me how to change a tire and the oil and the fan belts.

My parents were not into sexist stereotypes. They didn’t buy that BS. There were tasks that were required to make life move forward and everyone in the house shared those tasks. Mowing the lawn and washing the dishes and cleaning the bathroom were chores for everyone – they were not boy chores and girl chores. (I was actually kind of shocked when I discovered as an adult that some women had grown up having to wait on their brothers.)

Back to clothes. Later in my career, I discovered consignment stores and started to dress like a middle-aged lady from Boca Raton.

Not a surprise, as I was living in Miami and shopping in the wealthy Miami neighborhoods.

I thought the all-silk suits were cute! I had a green pantsuit and a peach skirt suit that were in heavy rotation.

Y’all, I was 32.

I was 32 and I looked like I was on my way to a mah-jongg tournament.

---

When I think now about clothing swaps with B and with my sister, I realize with the clarity of hindsight that I was always accepting their castoffs because THEY HAD GREAT TASTE.

My sister was and is always on trend. She got the hair and makeup gene that I most definitely did not. She always looks fabulous.

And B was the same. When we lived together, there wasn’t much I could take from B because she is built like a model and I am definitely not, but she was always very well put together: she did her hair and her makeup and dressed perfectly.

But they were not shopping my closet.

Gee why is that I wonder?

I was – and still am – the Glamour Don’t. As I write this, I am wearing the same thing I have been wearing for pretty much the past three years: a pair of running tights that I do not use for running but like because they are elastic and don’t hurt, a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt. And slippers.

My hair, which I have been cutting myself since our hairdresser retired plus covid, is in a ponytail. I washed it yesterday and might wash it tomorrow, but as I rarely go out in public anymore, I might not. Mr T is out of town, so – eh. Who cares?

Honestly, I am becoming the crazy old cat lady I was always scared I would become only now I wonder WHY WAS I SO SCARED? Why was I so scared of becoming a cat lady? It’s FABULOUS!

But also – why did I ever think anyone would want my clothes?

B, I am so sorry! I am so sorry for insulting you. I promise I meant no offense. I was clueless, not malicious. If you took those clothes straight to Goodwill or even put them in the ragbag, I would not be surprised and for sure would not be offended.

It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools – but what about craftswomen? The tools are not built for us. Neither is the system.

Did you know that the standard piano keyboard is too big for 87 per cent of women and 25 per cent of men?

That means that no matter how hard girls and women try, they will strain their hands as they try to play certain pieces.

That means that no matter how hard girls and women try, there are certain pieces they will never be able to play at all – because the handspan required for certain chords is too big for their hands.

That means that no matter how hard girls and women try, more men than women will become professional pianists, even though boys and girls start piano lessons in about the same proportions.

In this amazing podcast by Caroline Criado-Perez, she interviews a woman who bursts into tears as she plays a piano keyboard designed for smaller hands for the first time.

What would our world be like if our tools – our systems – were designed for us?

---

Do you remember the book Lean In? The advice was basically that if we women would be a little more assertive, things would go our way.

Underneath that advice was the idea that it’s our own fault for not leaning in. That we are the ones in charge of how we are treated and if we don’t get what we want, well – we’re just not working hard enough.

And yet.

Guess what?

It’s not us.

It was never us.

It was the keyboard.

It was the tools.

It was the system.

---

A study published a few years ago in the Harvard Business Review showed that even when women lean in – when they behave the same way as men, we do not get treated the same.

(YOU ARE SHOCKED! SHOCKED YOU SAY!)

But as we analyzed our data, we found almost no perceptible differences in the behavior of men and women….

Our analysis suggests that the difference in promotion rates between men and women in this company was due not to their behavior but to how they were treated. 

This indicates that arguments about changing women’s behavior — to “lean-in,” for example — might miss the bigger picture: Gender inequality is due to bias, not differences in behavior.

Harvard Business Review

---

We thought it was us. We thought we were doing it wrong. We heard things like this in our performance evaluations:

“Jessica is really talented,” he said. “But I wish she’d be less abrasive.”

Kieran Snyder

While men heard this:

“Steve is an easy case,” he went on. “Smart and great to work with. He needs to learn to be a little more patient, but who doesn’t?”

Kieran Snyder

We are bossy and it’s bad. Men are aggressive and it’s good.

Words like bossy, abrasive, strident, and aggressive are used to describe women’s behaviors when they lead; words like emotional and irrational describe their behaviors when they object.

All of these words show up at least twice in the women’s review text I reviewed, some much more often. Abrasive alone is used 17 times to describe 13 different women.

Among these words, only aggressive shows up in men’s reviews at all. It shows up three times, twice with an exhortation to be more of it.

Kieran Snyder

---

We thought we were doing it wrong.

But it was never us. It never was.

It has always been the keyboard.

It has always been the tools.

It has always been the system.

Who decides what’s art and what is not art?

(Hahahahaha that’s a trick question we all know who decides)

What is art?

And who decides what is art?

Well we all know – or if you think about it, we should know – the answer to the second question.

Men.

Men decide what is art.

And guess what?

Art is what men do. Craft is what women do. And craft is lesser.

You think I am making this up?

I am not.

I read a book a few years ago – I can’t remember the title but it turns out this conversation is still ongoing – about art and craft. The TLDR is that at the beginning of the 19th century, there was a debate about art. What is it?

And the TLDR on that is that basically, if women do it, it’s craft, but if men do it, it’s art.

Crafts can include weaving, carving, pottery, embroidery, macrame, beading, sewing, quilting, and many other forms. 

Eden Gallery

Quick question: Who usually does the weaving and the embroidery and the sewing and the quilting?

OK, they included carving in the list, but the rest – it’s women.

And, NB, if men do it, it becomes art. When men design and sew clothes, they are tailors or even fashion designers. When men cook, they are chefs. You get the picture.

This entire piece on the debate is really interesting, but this quotation sums it up: If it’s useful and used in the home (that is, if WOMEN make it), it’s not art. Only art that exists for art’s sake is art.

Craftspeople traditionally made items that had a domestic function; even those of a high quality didn’t have the same luxury status as art, which has no practical purpose. This distinction gave the crafts a lower status, and craftspeople were considered working class, while artists often moved in high society circles.

Eden Gallery

---

Mr T and I went on a sculpture tour last night. We saw a piece – photo above – by Michelle Grabner, a Milwaukee artist who teaches at the Art Institute in Chicago. This piece was clearly part of this series: “Many are sculptural casts of hand-knitted and crocheted blankets that reflect her career-long interest in domestic environments and everyday life.” (Source)

Not to mention challenge the ideology that craft <> art. She is making ART out of a CRAFT.

Grabner has been criticized as being a “soccer mom.” In a 2014 New York Times review of her show, a critic called her a “soccer mom” and said her art was “bland.”

Nothing in all this is more interesting than the unexamined sociological background of the whole. If the show were a satire of the artist as a comfortably middle-class tenured professor and soccer mom, it would be funny and possibly illuminating, but it’s not.

Is being a soccer mom bad?

Can soccer moms not create art?

---

I am reminded of the debate that Jennifer Weiner has been waging on the behalf of female writers against the patriarchy. She notes that when women write about women’s lives, the books are dismissed as “chick lit,” but when men (like Jonathan Frazen – full disclosure I HATE HIS BOOKS) do it, it’s literature.

Do I think I should be getting all of the attention that Jonathan “Genius” Franzen gets? Nope. Would I like to be taken at least as seriously as a Jonathan Tropper or a Nick Hornby? Absolutely.

Jennifer Weiner

She also notes that the majority of the reviewers at the New York Times and the reviews are by men, for men.

However, I think it’s irrefutable that when it comes to picking favorites – those lucky few writers who get the double reviews AND the fawning magazine profile AND the back-page essay space AND the op-ed, or the Q and A edited and condensed by Deborah Solomon – the Times tends to pick white guys. Usually white guys living in Brooklyn or Manhattan, white guys who either have MFAs or teach at MFA programs…white guys who, I suspect, remind the Times’ powers-that-be of themselves, minus twenty years and plus some hair.

Jennifer Weiner

---

Mr T and I watched a woman weave a scarf.

She designed the scarf herself. She threaded the loom. She shuttled every single thread through, one by one.

This, my friends, is what the art world considered and still considers to be “craft,” which, by their own admission, is not as worthy as “art.”

What do you think? Is it art?

“I will not donate a single dime to a trader of the USA!” texted an idiot about my candidate

We are a representative democracy. And every citizen deserves representation.

Even the stupid ones.

But y’all – I am done. There’s a limit and I have found it.

I can handle stupid+good. I can handle stupid+willing to learn. I can handle ignorant+good+willing to learn.

What I cannot handle is stupid+ignorant+evil.

You know who I’m talking about.

Yes.

Trump supporters. Current trump supporters.

---

I’m volunteering for a male candidate for Congress who is running against an incumbent. (The incumbent is a trumper.)

The campaign sends out texts and then we volunteers answer them with canned replies, although I have been correcting the grammar on those canned replies and will sometimes modify the reply.

For instance, someone asked to be removed from the list, saying that the person who had had the number had died, so of course the human response is to not only remove the number from the list but also to say, “I am sorry for your loss.” We are not monsters.

Where I struggle is with responding to stupid people.

Sometimes, I let myself write the answer I want, such as in this case:

One person replied that he would not donate money to my candidate, so I asked who he was supporting for the seat my candidate is running for.

“TRUMP 2024!” he answered.

To which I replied – I couldn’t help it – “Is Trump running for Congress in 2024?”

Other times, I have to hold myself back because I don’t want anything to blow up for my candidate.

You will not win. I will not donate a single dime to a trader of the USA!!

My immediate impulse was to respond with “it’s ‘traitor,’ not ‘trader.'”

(But I didn’t.)

Do you believe in God? Democratic party praises Satin. You will not receive a donation from this house. We stand with God.

You know where I wanted to go with this one. (But I didn’t.)

If only you knew how BETTER it would be if your whore of a mother swallowed you, instead of shitting you out, you PEDOPHILIC POS ZHERVA ABORTA, SHLYUKHA TROTSKAYA.

FUCK YOU FUCK YOUR GOVERNMENT FUCK ALL YOUR POLITICIANS YOU ARE SPAWNS OF THE SATAN

Repent or hell is yours forever ask Gid to forgive you and be righteous not a politician

Satin/an is a popular theme. As is Gid.

Pound salt you communist pig

Is pounding salt a thing?

Blow it out your ass [candidate]. I would not vote for you if you we’re running against Adolph Hitler

What I wanted to say: “were. ‘Were’ running against…” (But I didn’t.)

I hope you trip on a rock in the middle of the night and stub your toe

After all the vitriol, this one seemed kind of – sweet. Although who has rocks on the floor of their bedroom?

---

How can I be so sure these people are stupid, ignorant, and evil?

Easy.

They still support trump.

Despite everything, they still support him.

So either they know what he’s done and what he’s really like and they don’t care, which makes them evil, or they have no clue, which makes them ignorant, and no interest in learning, which makes them stupid.

I know people who voted for him in 2016 because they had always voted for Republicans.

But as the horrors of that man emerged (well, more horrors), they changed. A dear college friend said her mom and dad had always voted R because that’s just what they did. But with trump, they were so horrified that not only are they now supporting Ds, they are also active in the Lincoln Project.

That, my friends, is the appropriate response.

Not doubling down on your support (looking at a few cousins to whom I will probably never speak again).

---

I think most of these people – the texters above – are just stupid blowhards who find daring in anonymity, but there is a real-life impact of this kind of thing. A friend is running for state office. Last night, she messaged me to ask if I was out of town with Mr T.

“I asked if he would do doors with me,” she said, “but he said he’s gone hiking for a week.”

She’s trying to find people to campaign with her during the day.

“I can’t go alone for safety reasons,” she wrote.

She has gotten death threats. I’m sure she has gotten rape threats, too, because that’s what some men do.

Mr T ran for office four times and not once in all that time did we think that he shouldn’t campaign alone.

No, he didn’t get death threats or rape threats, but even without such threats, my friend would probably be reluctant to go out on her own.

I offered to help if she thought a middle-aged woman would count as protection.

“I just need another person so I can’t get attacked or kidnapped and no one knows,” she answered.

Because there are stupid, evil people out there. Still.

“I was right,” the anthropology professor said. “I was RIGHT.”

Mr T and I went to the Aztalan mounds in southern Wisconsin to hear an anthropology professor from the University of Wisconsin at Madison talk about her research: how the late Woodland population and members of the Mississippian civilization lived together and how they got together in the first place.

(Why did I not learn any of this in school? I barely knew the names “Apache” and “Navajo” and they were rarely mentioned in the context of anything good.)

As the professor was giving us the background, a small woman with long graying hair secured by four barrettes, her leathery, wrinkled face without makeup, wearing faded clothes and Birkenstocks and sitting on a tiger-print coat, raised her hand and asked in accented English (Russian, maybe?) if it was possible that the Mississippians had migrated north via the Mississippi River.

Which – was not what I was expecting a little old-ish lady to ask, especially a little old-ish lady with a heavy accent.

Maybe she was also an anthropologist? Maybe she was an anthropologist who had been forced to flee from her native country? And she couldn’t get another university job? But she was current on the literature and wanted to talk to a colleague?

I don’t know. I want to know! I want the full story. What I do know is that Little Old-ish Lady asked some great questions and made the whole thing a lot more interesting.

---

Back to the professor.

Some kind of imaging technology had helped her see what might be underground. Even though other mound communities didn’t have houses in certain areas, this new technology indicated there might be something in the plaza. (Is that where? I can’t remember for sure – it’s been a few weeks since this happened.)

Other archeologists and other anthropologists insisted there couldn’t possibly be anything in that area, but the professor asked for permission to dig.

And she found stuff.

She found houses and the other things she was looking for.

“I was right,” she said, as she told us the story. “I was RIGHT.”

---

My friend and former co-worker (at a tech company) – let’s call her Ali – is an archeologist. She left the profession because she was tired of life on the road.

“[The professor] said other archeologists discounted her ideas,” I texted her. “She meant ‘men,’ I bet.”

Ali replied, “Archaeologists are jerks. And yes, they are mostly men.”

But we knew that, right?

When the person who wants to give you money for your tomatoes asks you to stop talking, STOP TALKING

What do you do when a man is being annoying and you ask him to stop and he doesn’t stop?

All I wanted was a few tomatoes and some corn on the cob.

But when Mr T and I started discussing which tomatoes to get and which corn to get, the vendor – whose entire job is to get people to give him money – interjected himself into the conversation with his musings on the proper roles of men and women.

“Who does the cooking?” the vendor asked.

“She does most of it,” Mr T said.

The vendor nodded in satisfaction.

I picked a box of tomatoes and showed it to Mr T. “What about these?” I asked him.

The vendor nodded again. “He’s THE MAN but I bet you’re THE BOSS!” he said.

“Uh huh,” I answered politely, “uh-huh” being a nice way of saying, “I know there are words coming out of your mouth but I do not want to listen to them. Even if I were not busy selecting tomatoes, I would not want to listen to you.”

“I mean,” the vendor continued, “we all know who the man is and who the woman is but we all really know who THE BOSS is!”

“Uh huh,” I said again, as Mr T disagreed with my choice of tomatoes, which was fine because he cares way more than I do and whatever tomatoes is not the hill I am dying on and it’s not like he picks bad tomatoes anyhow. He is an excellent selector of tomatoes.

We walked around to the corn and Mr T started to examine it.

“He’s picking the corn? But you’re the cook!” the vendor said.

“He’s better at picking corn,” I said.

(This is true – Mr T is also a very good selector of corn.)

“In the Bible,” the vendor volunteered, “the man is the head of the household but we all know who is really in charge!” he said.

“Yeah we’re not going to have this conversation,” I said. “Please stop.”

The vendor persisted. “But in the BIBLE….” he said.

“I do not like where this conversation is going,” I interrupted. “Please. Please stop talking.”

It did not work.

He kept talking.

Because he’s the man and if the man wants to talk, it doesn’t matter what a woman wants.

However.

He is not the only one selling tomatoes or corn.

So I will never see him again.

If you don’t have a friend you can trust to clean out your Box of Stuff, then you have been living your life wrong

I’m going to gossip about relatives and I’m not even embarrassed about it.

But first – heed my advice.

If you have any kind of toys or equipment or nekkid photos of you and anyone else with or without the toys or equipment, keep them all in a box and enlist a trusted friend – give her a key – to burn it (without opening it) when you die. Make those arrangements right now.

Here’s the thing: Your kids, even if they are adults, do not want to see your toys. They do not want to see your equipment. They do not want to see your collection of vintage porn. They do not want to see photos of you naked. With equipment.

---

And yet.

And yet.

And yet.

When Mr T’s parents died, he got to see all of that.

In all of the mess of settling their estate – they made him executor but disinherited him, which was mean, so don’t do that. It’s OK to give all your money to your grandkids, but to give all your money to your grandkids and then still stick your child with all the work of not only closing the estate but also then being the trustee for the grandkids?

That is next-level assholery.

Don’t be those people.

---

So that wasn’t bad enough. But then, Mr T’s parents apparently either thought they would never die or shrugged their shoulders at the idea of Mr T finding and having to discard their – their stuff.

And we did find it.

No matter how hard I try, I will never be able to erase the image of my sister in law opening the nightstand and pulling out a – toy. She started laughing in shocked surprise, then wagged the – toy – around.

You could not have paid me a million dollars to touch that thing.

(Well yes I would have touched it for a million dollars but not for ten dollars.)

Mr T also found a strap on. And he found photos of his parents naked. With – you know.

Y’all! I am not a prude! Grown folks acting with full consent, do what you want to do!

But hear this:

Nobody in the entire world ever wants to see naked photos of his parents. Ever. Even the most twisted person does not want that.

Do it. Do it right now. Put the stuff in a box. Label it “Tax records 2003-07” so nobody gets curious. Put the box on a shelf in your closet. Call your best friend. Ask her to commit to getting rid of the box when you die. Buy her a drink the next time you see her. And know that you will not be inflicting distress on your kids.

So many takeaways from COVID and one of them is that Life is Short

When my grandmother moved into the nursing home, she had a small stash of Nice Things. Some of them were gifts – fancy soaps and toiletries – that she returned to the giver, some were items that I guess she had had for a long time – nightgowns, tablecloths – that she was saving for a special occasion.

Instead of using the Good Soap, she used Irish Spring. (Not that there’s anything wrong with Irish Spring, but sometimes, it’s nice to use the Lavender with Goats’ Milk.)

Instead of using the Fancy Nightgowns, she slept in what she had.

I understand, I think. She grew up very poor and never did have much money. I mean, this was a woman who mended and re-used her pantyhose. She knew how to get along with what she had.

But even if what she had was nice, she wouldn’t use it. The time wasn’t right.

And then she got too old and had to move into a nursing home and never used the Nice Things at all.

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Mr T and I have, in the course of our marriage, broken or damaged things, including the red ITALIAN bowls you see above.

OK – true confession – I did get them at TJMaxx, but that does not make me love them any less.

(Gorgeous AND a great deal!)

We have also chipped the beautiful pasta bowls my friends Dave and Laura got for me.

(Pro tip: Part of keeping your ceramics nice is not to get the Zojila dishrack. The slots are too small and your dishes will slip and chip and crack. I hate you, Zojila.)

I have found replacements for the damaged bowls on eBay.

No, they weren’t cheap. That is, they cost more than the original prices.

I don’t care. I like having nice things to use every day.

Yet Mr T’s attitude is that the new, undamaged items should live in the attic until the damaged items are completely unusable.

That is, we should use the damaged goods instead of the – the – the good goods.

(And yes, I have learned how to place items in the dishdrainer to prevent cracking. Basically, you can dry one bowl at a time because it has to sit completely upside down. Again – I hate you, Zojila.)

Mr T is concerned about damaging things through normal use.

It’s a lot easier to bake and cook when he’s out of the house, because if he’s here, he hovers and looms and worries about ALL THE DIRTY DISHES and WHAT IF I SPILL SOMETHING ON THE FLOOR and HEY THAT’S MESSY!

Although I find it hard to believe based on what I saw of his parents’ house – they did not really run a tight ship when it came to tidiness or cleanliness, I suspect he was beaten with a cat o’ nine tails when he deviated at all from absolute neatness when was a child.

(As in, shortly after we met, he vacuumed the pollen off some cut sunflowers so it wouldn’t fall on the table.)

(Yes I know this is very very weird.)

So you see what I’m up against.

And yet – I persisted.

And I prevailed.

And I have convinced Mr T that we will switch the damaged bowls for the good bowls and will happily, merrily (at least I will – Mr T will probably use them trepidatiously) use our Nice Things Before We Die.

Amen.

When a 6’6″, 250-lb man mansplains how I should deal with rude behavior

Mr T, my friend L, and I were at a music festival. It was all free to see a ton of amazing musicians, so we were grateful and didn’t want to complain about anything. How can you complain about great music delivered to you for nothing?

I admit I wasn’t happy about being in an enclosed space with unmasked people and on a warm day, at that, but then I realized I could solve the problem. At least, I could solve the problem of warm, stagnant air.

I opened the plastic walls.

Nobody stopped me and indeed, others joined me. Soon, we had airflow and it was much more comfortable.

But dealing with the Standers was a little more challenging.

For an hour – an entire hour, people drifted in front of us and stopped. They didn’t sit in the empty seats near us. They didn’t check to make sure they weren’t blocking anyone’s view.

They just walked until they hit a chokepoint and then they stopped.

Sometimes, they danced. I don’t want to harsh anyone’s mellow and I believe you should dance if the spirit so moves you, but what dancing does is make it impossible for me to adjust to your position. That is, even if I move a bit so I can now see the performer, you move as well and – there you go, blocking me again.

For the first hour, we just laughed about it. Every few minutes, a new person would step into the spot where he blocked our view. We rolled our eyes and laughed, but after an hour, it got to be a bit annoying.

That was when Mr T stomped in front of one of the standers to block the stander’s view. Mr T was going to Show Them!

He lasted 22 seconds.

Then he slunk back to his seat.

He couldn’t bear to be rude.

Which of course is one of the reasons I love him.

We had to resort to grand gestures to indicate our displeasure. We pointed to the empty seats. We laughed louder and rolled our eyes – well, rollier? In any case, it was probably clear to anyone paying attention that we recognized the situation and were not terribly happy about it.

As we got up to leave – our musician had finished, a huge man – maybe 6’6″ with big muscles – came over to me.

(Not to Mr T, but to me. Because it’s the Little Woman who needs telling, right?)

“Just let it go,” he advised. “And if you can’t, then just ask them to move.”

1. Total stranger
2. Giving me advice
3. I had not asked for
4. And would not work in this context

What even is the proper answer?

What I wanted to say:

1. I’m supposed to ask every single person who has blocked my view over the past hour to move? Which means I would be asking someone every three minutes or so?
2. Did I ask you for advice?
3. What color is the sky in your world? The world where women’s requests of men are heeded immediately and never turn into bad situations?
4. Did I ask you?
5. I bet that works for you.
6. Did I ask you?
7. Did I ask you?
8. Did I ask you?

What I did:

I adopted the strategy I used years ago when I was a clerk at Macy’s over Christmas.

I couldn’t use my current online strategy, which is not to argue or engage in any way with idiots, but the Macy’s strategy is close: Say anything to get them to go away.

“If you don’t like it,” he persisted, “you should just say something!”

“Of course you are right,” I said.

“Don’t just get mad! Just ask them!” he continued.

Because when women just ask men to do something, they do it! It always works! THANK YOU SIR!