Bossy Pants

Me Showing Joe the Correct Place to Look at the Eclipse

Joe calls me Bossy Pants, which, by the way, he totally stole from Tina Fey. 

I am a bit bossy.  This comes from a combination of two things: 1. I was divorced for twenty-two years, which is a lot of years to be in charge of myself and my surroundings and where I put things (in logical places) and how I do things (the correct way). 

2. Joes needs to be bossed.  He has pretty much had a woman in charge of him all his life – his mother, then his wife, Mary, now me.  Even his daughter, Meghan and his granddaughters, Lilly and Elle, offer guidance of the female kind when needed (which is often).  The one time Joe was out from under the hand of a woman was the year he lived in France as a senior in college, the year he pretty much just drank cheap wine, smoked rank cigarettes, hung around in Spain, and didn’t manage to graduate – at least for a while. 

And then there is the number of secretaries Joe had during his working years – all of whom were female (and quite bossy).  I have a theory about what’s wrong with our world currently and it has to do computers taking the place of secretaries.  Although Alexa can foresee and even intervene in a manner timely enough to forestall or at least reduce some othe chaos inherent in the male DNA, so far she can’t seem to discern if their flies are open.

Don’t get me wrong.  Joe is a very smart man.  He does well hollering out the answers on Jeopardy, although he often forgets to put the answer in the form of a question, something I point out to him each time.  He beats me at ALL card games, but I’m pretty sure he cheats.  He even wins at Scrabble and I’m supposed to be the WORD PERSON.  In addition, Joe completes the demanding New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle while I struggle with the just shall we say less demanding Monday one.

But, alas, the man can’t manage to remember an appointment or find a band-aid or close a drawer.  

Part of the reason I’m (somewhat) bossy is that I am the family mapper-outer when Joe and I take our drives.  Joe does the steering and the gas pedaling about 99.9% percent of the time because my eyeballs and my nerves just aren’t up for the job anymore, especially in Atlanta.  But because we use Google maps and Siri for much of our navigation and because Joe doesn’t listen to Siri any better than he listens to me, I must constantly (and gently I might add) let him know where to go (left right here!),  when to turn (now!), and how fast to drive (*#!* slow down!) When I comment on Joe’s driving, he retorts with “I’m an excellent driver", something he totally stole from Raymond Babbitt.  

When we went to Ireland, Joe drove and, yes, he did “an excellent job”.  However, driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of very narrow roads necessitated much help from me.  My main job was to yell “curb!” at the appropriate times, and, believe me, there were MANY appropriate times. 

 

Joe driving on the Wrong Side of the Road

 

 Ok, since maybe I need to agree with Joe that I just might be a bit of a bossy pants, I'm going to try to mend my ways.  And I'll start as soon as I let him know it's time for him to water the grass and then take out the trash after he closes that drawer in the bathroom, and to remind him to check his fly.

Somebody's gotta do it.

Why It's so Difficult to Talk to a Man

Joe talking to his daughter, Meghan.  You can tell by the look on her face that it's something boring.

When I moved to Midtown Atlanta and began teaching elementary school again eight years ago, the only people I talked to were women and kids.  Women and kids are easy to talk to because they are logical and make sense. Men, on the other hand, aren't and don't.

About six months ago, Joe re-entered my life - an old friend who became my new love.  The very good and very bad news is that Joe is a man.

I now remember why it's so difficult to talk to a man.  Here are just some of the reasons:

1.  Men can't (or refuse to) remember important things.

 Joe can recall the names of every athlete, author, musician, actor, poet, composer, or protagonist he's ever watched, listened to, or read about in his entire life, but he can’t remember the names of any of my friends. 

For example:

Me:  “I’m going to call Bonnie.” 
Joe:  “Who?” 
Me:  “You know Bonnie, the one we visited whose husband is the banker.  They have the baby named Jasmine.” 

Or:

Me:  “We’re going to visit Portia on the 10th, right?” 
Joe:  “Who?” 
Me:  “Portia, my cousin, the one we are going to visit on the 10th.”

So it’s hard to carry on a conversation when I'm always having to regurgitate everyone’s biography every time I start talking.

 2.  Men don't gossip (at least not well).

 Joe doesn’t know how to gossip.  He just doesn’t get the point of it.  This is made more difficult since he can’t remember anyone’s name and I have to provide the back story before I start in on the juicy stuff.

For example:

Me:  “Remember Mavis?”
Joe:  “Who?”   
Me:  “My friend whose brother accidentally set himself on fire.  Well, her other brother, not the one who set himself on fire, his wife ran off with another man.  Mavis is so upset.”  
Me:  “Who?”

3.  Men aren't interested in anything interesting.
 

 Joe only speaks in sports or old movie or Bob Dylan analogies, which are stupid. And when I ask him a sports question just to pretend I’m interested, he goes on too long, with too many facts, too much analysis, and, before I know it, the commercial break for House Hunters International is over and I’ve missed out on which house the cute couple chose.

4.  Men's sense of humor is different (and less evolved) than that of women. 
 

Joe only knows one joke, the string joke, which is not funny.  In spite of that, he doesn’t get my jokes, which are funny, although they are often dirty.

5.  Men are not good commiseraters.

When I want to complain about something or someone, Joe provides a solution.  A woman would never do that.  She would just agree with me about what an ass that person who wronged me is.  Joe doesn’t understand that I don’t want to solve the problem, I just want to bitch about it in a friendly and agreeable milieu.  I want to be validated, not fixed.

6.  Men are literal and without nuanced layers.

The other evening, Joe and I went out to his back patio for an after-dinner drink when he noticed that something had torn the upholstery on his patio chairs.  After some brainstorming about what it could have been - a squirrel, a snake, a cat, a dog, a mountain lion (in Coastal Georgia), or an angry neighbor, Joe finally conceded that it just might have been a raccoon since they are known to frequent his neighborhood.  

At that point, Joe said, "I wonder if Robert would let me use one of his traps," to which I said, "Now, remind me of who Robert is", hoping that he'd fill me in on some kind of interesting information (if not gossip) about Robert.

But alas, Joe's reply was

"He's the guy with the trap."

And so, there, in one big ole man-sized nutshell,  is why it's so difficult to talk to a man, or least to Joe.*

*If you have any commiseration to offer, let me know. Otherwise, keep all solutions to yourself.

Eight Breasts Abreast

We were teachers and mothers of young children. All four of us had graduated from The University of Georgia and married good old boys who were fanatical about their football. It made sense that we would become friends. It made even more sense that we would get dolled up, decked out, and packed into the back of a mini van, eight breasts abreast, for road trips most Saturdays each fall, along with a bonus trip some time around January first if it had been a good year and the refs weren't idiots.

The boys commandeered the front, hiding their beers from county cops and the state patrol, doing the important work of navigating the same road and the same stories week in and week out, season after season. We girls in the back gossiped and sipped from demur Dixie cups. We talked children and teaching, hair and, yes, recipes. We joked about the fools up front.

Resplendent in our red and black, we stopped at the same gas station for what the guys called "seeing a man about a horse" and what was, for us, a potty break and a chance to check our lipstick. We also took that opportunity to make sure the potato salad wasn't going bad in the back. We sometimes made a quick call from a pay phone to check on the kids, who were generally running rampant with their current favorite teenage babysitter.

The Georgia-Florida Game earned us an entire weekend with separate cars heading toward Jekyll on a November Friday, after dropping the children off with various grandparents along the way. On Saturday morning, we would reconvene from our rented house in the largest vehicle available for the ride to Jacksonville, we women again shimmied into the back, a 1980's case study in gender roles.

Our shared stories had a common theme. Whereas Westside Story had its Jets and Sharks, we were Squirrels and Groundhogs. Dianne and Susan were Squirrels, packing up after each picnic, and spritzing and sweeping out every weekend rental. Cindy and I were above it all, telling the Squirrels they were leaving each place even BETTER than it was before we came, and they were wasting their time teaching little children when they could be making a killing working for a cleaning service. On the other hand, we were dubbed the Groundhogs, a moniker requiring no explanation other than we only did real work once a year.

One of my favorite memories of those days as a young wife, mother, and peripatetic Dawg follower was what I remember as one hot afternoon in Jacksonville, although it may be a collage-like recollection of several such afternoons. We had to pee. The boys had already taken care of their business behind something somewhere, but Dianne couldn't "go" in the wild. Rumor had it that a woman who lived on the edge of the Gator Bowl parking lot would let people use her bathroom for five dollars. Norma turned out to be a very nice, not to mention pragmatic, soul who stood at the door of her small ornately decorated home, collecting five bucks in paper money and change, sending us back two at a time to take care of what our bladders had commissioned. Before the day was over, we considered Norma to be our best friend, and Squirrels and Groundhogs alike were arguing as to why Norma should be one of us.

The years went by and life happened. The Big Kat (my poor maligned ex and blog muse) and I parted ways but remained friends. The other marriages were kept intact despite some potholes in that road to Athens. Our children grew up and left the nest but we still worried about them. Were they having too many relationships or too few? Were they half as smart as they thought they were? Did they really have health insurance or were they just telling us they did? Before we knew it, we were all past fifty and there were grandchildren adorably littered here and there across the landscape.

The collateral damage to my divorce had included the loss of football tickets, Masters badges, and trips to the Sugar Bowl, but we four women remained friends, coming together for wedding showers and "Girls Night Out." When we would meet up, we'd reminisce about the days in the back of the mini van and marvel that we were still eight breasts abreast, although the old latitude had certainly headed south. We worried about wrinkled knees and wondered if a face lift would just make the rest of us look worse.

A few years ago I had a breast cancer scare which lasted for about the longest two weeks of my life. I don't know how cancer survivors handle it; their courage is outside the borders of my imagination. Of course, the girls, worried about the fragility of breasts abreast, came together to bring me dinner. It turned out, just minutes before they arrived with their Tupperware and crock pots, I got word that what might have been cancer was, instead, a benign cyst. I rather sheepishly told them the news, hoping they wouldn't take back their dishes as I was hungry for the first time in days. They didn't, but Cindy, in true Groundhog fashion said, "You mean I made a pot roast for a benign cyst?" The Squirrels vacuumed my house before they left.

These days, Susan and her husband have retired to another place and I've moved to Atlanta. Cindy became a Tech fan when her son played football there. Dianne is the proud mother of a teacher and an Air Force pilot. We mostly keep up by email and "social networking", along with an occasional phone call, generally when something bad happens. Each year the Squirrels remember us Groundhogs with some kind of derisive card or email message on our special day. Decades ago, Cindy and I decided the perfect holiday for the Squirrels would be April Fools Day, but of course, so far, we haven't seemed to get around to commemorating it in any way.

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