Friday, Nov. 07, 2008
The Confessions of a Mad Housewife
I have a black and white sense of fairness, but a wailing baby sense of compassion.
Last week, I watched the Texas vs. Texas Tech football game. At the end of the duel I felt bad for the Longhorns. If they had won, I would have felt sappy for the Raiders. I asked my husband if he felt sorry for the losers; he looked at me like I was from another planet.
Are my feelings about competition a Mars-Venus gender thing?
I thought about the way my brother and I were raised. We had the same parents, but learned different lessons. He was taught to be competitive, self-promoting and assertive. I was served the "Lite" version of this message.
Others were probably raised hearing this message as well. I know my husband was.
We have a precious little dog that was Houdini in a past life. She can escape from any yard, fence or collar. The other day my husband fixed the fence to cut off her latest escape route. In recounting the tale to his mother, he claimed he "developed a piece of wood" to abate the problem. My jaw dropped. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t promoted to CEO. I never "developed" anything. He hammered a piece of wood to the fence and made it sound like he’d built the space shuttle.
Note to self: Defrost chicken to "develop" dinner.
The Mars point was punctuated again a few days later at Bible study. God is nonpartisan, so I wore my Obama "Hope" T-shirt. The group started as a women’s Bible study, but a few years ago it was opened to men.
That day I asked a male attendee if he knew where the Coke machine is located. He looked at my T-shirt and refused to tell me. I figured he must be joking so I said "Can’t we all just get along?" He replied "No."
I was caught off guard. Did winning or losing a political race matter so much that he couldn’t set it aside to eat sausage rolls and discuss forgiveness for 60 minutes?
I felt like I was beginning to understand the differences between men and women.
On Halloween, I played a tennis match against some Lakergirls — Southlake women who are cute, rich and sometimes have synthetic body parts.
For fun, and in the spirit of the holiday, I wore a costume. Actually it was just a bowling shirt with the name Prissy embroidered on the front.
The Lakergirls wanted no part of fun; they were there to win. They didn’t want to laugh between points or trade stories about kids, sales or cranky husbands. They even yelled at me because I took a drink when I wasn’t supposed to, walked too slowly and picked up balls after each point ... only out of concern that a twisted ankle at my age could limit my ability to wear heels.
Even though the Lakergirls don’t look like men, they played like them.
It made me sad. How could I be so wrong? I thought women’s compassionate approach to life, and especially competition, made us better than men. Maybe there is no Venus, or maybe it’s like Pluto and just doesn’t measure up.
Then something wonderful happened. That afternoon I received a message from one of the women I played against in the tennis match. She called to apologize.
I listened to her message a few times. I was uplifted. Her words put the planets, including Mars and Venus, back into alignment.
Well, at least until the next tennis match.
Print
E-Mail
