looking at the world from the inside out
I’d like to thank Ruby for bringing today’s rememberance to my attention. Those of you who know me well enough already know why I didn’t hesitate to post about this subject today. This video is a short, but very powerful example of how domestic violence affects us all…
Have fun ladies!
I once met a man with a sense of adventure
He was dressed to thrill wherever he went
He said “Let’s make love on a mountain top
Under the stars on a big hard rock”
I said “In these shoes?
I don’t think so”
I said “Honey, let’s do it here.”
So I’m sitting at a bar in Guadalajara
In walks a guy with a faraway look in his eyes
He said “I’ve got as powerful horse outside
Climb on the back, I’ll take you for a ride
I know a little place, we can get there for the break of day.”
I said “In these shoes?
No way, Jose”
I said “Honey, let’s stay right here.”
No le gusta caminar. No puede montar a caballo
(She doesn’t like to walk, she can’t ride a horse)
Como se puede bailar? Es un escandolo
(But the way she dances, it’s a scandal)
Then I met an Englishman
“Oh” he said
“Won’t you walk up and down my spine,
It makes me feel strangely alive.”
I said “In these shoes?
I doubt you’d survive.”
I said “Honey, let’s do it.
Let’s stay right here.”
No le gusta caminar. No puede montar a caballo
(She doesn’t like to walk, she can’t ride a horse)
Como se puede bailar? Es un escandolo
(But the way she dances, it’s a scandal)
(Sadly, Kirsty MacColl was killed in a scuba diving accident the year she filmed this live performance in 2000. The details surrounding her death continue to be a source of controversy)
What started out as a little joke by Anonymum on my post about my search for perfect hair stylist has now come to fruition. The Blog of Knowledge is now open for business! Anonymum, Red, and me, ObservantBystander are your host bloggers/wise women, and we are eagerly waiting to fill your heads with our vast knowledge of men, life, love, fashion, or just about anything you could possibly want to know. If you have a specific question just burning a hole in your brain, leave it in our handy Questions folder on the site. Answers are guaranteed to be cheeky, smugly written (with no spelling errors!), and possibly even correct! So hop on over and let us dazzle you with the combined wisdom of our 130 years of glorious femaleness. From living to loving and from shopping to sex, the Blog of Knowledge has it all!
I have been surrounded by men all day long for the past 11 years, which has allowed me to do what I do best: Observe. Observing men in their natural habitat (surrounded by tools and equipment and stuff with motors) has often been frustrating, but as study material, they’re terribly fascinating creatures. I’m old enough to be off their chick-cruising radar plus, matter-of-fact and unobtrusive enough for them to sometimes forget I’m there. That’s when I gather my best material – sort of like Jane Goodall with the chimpanzees – and here’s a real news flash you women probably won’t believe: 1) Men can’t find anything that’s hidden behind something else and 2) Men have an aversion to throwing trash in a trash can. Women seem to possess these relatively simple skills and I wonder if having a uterus gives us special powers above and beyond childbearing. I swear someday I’m going to write a book and call it “It Takes a Uterus.”
Sometimes I like to take impromptu polls, just to see what’s going on in those brains of theirs. Once I asked some of the guys what the bathroom door policy was between them and their SO: Bathroom door open or bathroom door closed? The answers were so surprising – Men who I pegged as really shy had a complete open door policy – they did everything right out in the open. Men who came off as open and really loud-mouthed were totally closed door people. Blew that hypothesis all to hell.
For the past two days I’ve been asking the question “What do men think about?” 
Specifically I wanted to know which topics dominated their brains on a day-to-day basis, and ladies, I’m sure you won’t be too surprised to find out it’s NOT your relationship or which color shirt goes with which pair of pants. So without further ado, I present to you my findings. Note that the study group contains males, ages 21-35 living in the rural Midwest, working construction for a living (but I have a sneaking suspician that the demographic doesn’t really matter…)
“Gee honey, whatcha doing?”
“I’m evaluating the picture quality of these sets.”Bullshit. They are fucking mesmerized by all the pretty flashing colors coming at them from all 4 directions at once.
So there you have it. Only one of my test subjects admitted to thinking about his relationship on a regular basis, but when I told him what some of the other answers had been, he decided that he probably thought about food and sports more than he actually thought about his SO. Some of the other answers given were: music, work, video games (again, sports), and dirt (WTF????). All in all, I’d say there were no surprises here. When the guys wanted to turn the tables and asked me what women thought about, I told them “Oh, you know, unicorns, gingersnaps, puppies, rainbows, and horses.” Man, if they get wind of our plan for a massive world takeover, they’d shit. Mum’s the word, ladies.
Muse’s post yesterday about favorite summer songs stirred up a lot of old memories for me, and I promised her a story about The Boys of Summer, but I’m not ready to write abou that yet as I’m still sorting some things out there. But today I heard Another Nail for my Heart by Squeeze and it got me to thinking about the summer of 1980 and a certain young man I had a mostly physical relationship with off and on for several years, starting in 1980. He was my college anatomy & physiology lab instructor (how’s that for kismet?) and the attraction was both immediate and intense. We were both in other relationships at the time – he with the woman would he would eventually marry and father 3 children with many, many years later, and I with my 2nd husband. We were both in “open” relationships (all the rage at the time) – which I do not recommend for a number of reasons that are not pertinent to this post, so I’ll not dwell on them here. Suffice to say, we dated each other with the full knowledge and consent of our respective mates, but couldn’t very well go to each other’s home and say “oh by the way, we’re going to be having sex in the spare bedroom,” so we had a lot of sex in our cars. This is something all of us have probably done at least a time or two, and it’s not usually the best situation, but I can attest that a lot of very good, toe-curling sex happened in backseats that summer.
The soundtrack was Squeeze and The Cars and Elvis Costello and Blondie. It felt like the color crimson and tasted like a hot flame. He was, at once, gentle and difficult, brilliant and obtuse, attentive and indifferent. A maddening person – the type of man I found myself attracted to with a vengence, over and over throughout my life. I loved him and hated him, but mostly I loved the elusiveness of him and the push/pull of emotions he ruled me with. I attempted to stop my obsession with him in the fall, but it actually took many years for it to be completely over for us. A chance encounter would lead to another several-week festival of physicality, then our paths would verge off again and we would lose contact again, sometimes for months or years. Each time, it got easier to walk away and not look back.
The last time I saw him, we met for lunch to say goodbye for the last time. I was moving away and we both knew I wouldn’t contact him when I came back for visits. I sat across the table from him, and while he talked nonstop about himself, I had a chance to really see him clearly for the first time in my life. It was over for me. It was finally over.
It’s a well known, documented fact that most men are not good with words. We women are completely comfortable using our words to communicate, and communicate we do – about everything we’re thinking and feeling – much to the dismay of the men in our lives. One of my favorite observations about guys is this: When you ask a man what he’s thinking and he says “Nothing”, that’s absolutely true. Don’t get me wrong. I love men. I’ve spent most of my life surrounded by them – I only have brothers, I work with men every day. I admire their ability to work out their differences with little fanfare or angst. Men can conceptualize three-dimensional objects in their head and do math without counting fingers and toes. But one thing men can’t do is read instructions.
The problem goes back to words. If you’ve ever gotten a new computer, you’re familiar with the very large, poster-size instructions that feature very few words, but has large, colorful pictures showing what you’re supposed to do to get your new computer up and running. This is because the research showed that men would not read a regular instruction manual, but were receptive to colorful pictures on a large, shiny poster.
One of my jobs is handling all of the Human Resources functions of our company, including choosing and administering the insurance benefits. Over the years I’ve struggled to find a good way to get a group of men with the attention span of about 5 minutes to fill out complicated medical insurance applications . In the past I’ve tried handing out the applications with written instructions to return them by a certain date. Then I’d spend several days reminding people to complete them and turn them in. There were always the people who would lose their forms. Then there were the people who wouldn’t fill them out completely. The whole process took several frustrating days.
I then decided to gather all the guys together to fill out the forms as a group effort. This would at least insure that I’d actually get the forms back, but I discovered that leading 20 men through a complicated 4-page form, with teeny tiny writing and waaaay too many words, was like directing a roomful of 6 year olds with ADD. Slow readers and writers would inevitably give up about halfway through the process, sit there until everyone was done, then turn in a half-completed form. Most guys, I found, would fill out only some parts of the form, sign it and turn it in. If there were parts that took much thought, they were almost always left blank.
It’s time to shop insurance again at my company, so I’ve come up with what I hope is a good plan. I’m meeting with groups of 4 each morning until this whole process is done. It’s a lot easier to help 4 guys complete a task that they find about as comfortable as a prostate exam than it is to get 20 of them to do it all at once. And as long as they all remember to actually show up for the meeting, I’ve got it made.
I don’t fault the guys for hating these forms. They are too complicated, too redundant, and difficult to read. Unfortunately, health insurance companies really do want ALL the parts of their forms filled out, and for some strange reason it’s not enough to have one spot on the form for your name – you have to fill in your name about 3 times in 3 different spots. Then there are the health questions – which due to new privacy laws prohibit me from helping the guys with. And they really, really need help.
So here’s a suggestion – insurance companies need to come up with a new streamlined application process. How about a large, fold-out instruction poster with colorful pictures? Name Goes Here. I Take _______ Medicine. Sign Here. I, for one, would be happy to help them come up with a prototype. My guys would probably really dig a poster with naked women or a sports theme, although on second thought those things might be even more distracting. I wish I could give everyone a financial incentive, because men really seem to like it when you hand out money. How about $5.00 for every person who correctly completes their application?
Hmmm. I might be on to something here.
In which it is proven that men don’t care about the color of our nails:
Me: “I got some new toenail polish this weekend”
Employee: “Hey, that reminds me. Once, I had 3 infected fingernails at the same time.”
I try again later…
Employee: “Hey check out the new lawnmower grille I just got! Cool, huh?”
Me: “Sure! Do you want to see my new toenail polish?”
Employee: “Uh, no”
In case you’re wondering, it’s L’oreal “Smell the Roses”, and it’s spectacular
Observant Bystander 