Revenge--Even Hypothetical--Is the Best Medicine

Even though the bra-burning part of the 1960s turns out to be a myth, suffice it to say that the modern women's movement happened a long time ago, long enough, it seemed to me yesterday, that I was surprised to be treated like a woman who didn't know a nut from a bolt when I dropped off my car at the VW dealership for its 30,000-mile check-up. I shouldn't have been particularly surprised because ours is still a sexist society, starting with the way journalists sometimes wrote about Hillary Clinton during her campaign to become the Democratic presidential nominee. I mean would Mr. Hillary Clinton ever have been described in newspapers as "shrill"?

The car experience was still galling me today when I went to the doctor for my 30,000-mile check-up. Why I told my GP that in Ralph's absence Sam carried my purse onto the plane when we flew to Atlanta for the holidays to free up my arms for Julia and two carry-ons, I'm not sure. But he easily topped my story by revealing that he was 1 of 20 kids in his family and that his 5' 3" mother, who was just as formidable as she was short, called each of her 13 boys "HITs," or husbands in training. She insisted that each one learn to cook, iron, and sew. On top of that, his seven older sisters trained their baby bro to buy their tampons, right down to the embarrassing price check screamed from the back of the store to the front. It made me realize that I have a lot of fundamentals to teach Sam before he gets sucked into some kind of macho force field. (After all, at six, he still kisses his mama goodbye in public.) 

But more than that, my doc inadvertently gave me just the right salve for my anger. I can take the car somewhere else for repairs, of course, but it won't ever satisfy me as much as imagining my Martens' VW man standing in line at the CVS with an armload of tampons, waiting for a price check.