2001-03-13 - 5:28pm

Who's Who Cheat Sheet
Who I Read

On the internal soundtrack: "Cocaine", Eric Clapton

FYI: Updates will be sporadic until next week -- explanation contained herein.

Well, now, that's interesting. A friend of mine from high school -- we were especially close in 9th grade -- was on the reunion invitation list as "not found". I did a little searching on the web and as it turns out, she's living practically around the corner from me! It seems like everybody ends up in or near DC at some point.

I wrote her an e-mail, she was happy to have been found, and we're supposed to get together for dinner next week. She sounds as bubbly and fun as I remember her, and she likes walking in the city and trying new places to eat, so it ought to be a great time.

So, things are icky right now. Stacey's Nana and Alicia's grandmother, both lovely women I used to see a lot as a child, have both died. Alicia's grandmother was a lot like my dad's mom -- full of life, enthusiastic, fun -- and I really can't believe she's gone.

Last time I saw her she was full of life. I hadn't seen her since she underwent surgery for some kind of cancer. The good news is that she went the way she wanted to go, without a drawn-out painful slow death, so there's that.

Her sixth grandchild, a boy, was born the day before she died. I can't imagine what it must be like for her son to have gained a child and lost a mother in the same 24-hour period.

The funerals are on Wednesday and Thursday. I was already planning to go to NJ this weekend to see Pop-Pop and work on clearing out his house, and now I have all these depressing events to attend.

I hate how everybody's dying on me these days. All of the older generation is getting so terribly frail. I hate it.

This next month is going to be stressful. In addition to this hellish week, Justin will be here next week, we might be going to San Diego for Poindexter's business trip the week after that, and then MIL and SIL and the nieces are coming from March 30 - April 15.

My high school reunion is in NJ on April 14, which also happens to be my brother's birthday AND Easter weekend. What a mess.

All of it is going to be great fun, of course, but I really wish I could space it out more. Poindexter are hardly going to get five minutes to ourselves for weeks on end. I think MIL & SIL are talking about going up to NJ to see the great-grandmother, which might give Poindexter and me a day or two of quiet.

I love my family, very very much -- we get along beautifully -- but let's face it: a house with five loud opinionated women and girls in it is going to be a tad chaotic. It'll be noisy, if nothing else, from all the shrieking of opinions.

I don't know what Poindexter was thinking when he married a woman so much like his mom and sister in that regard. I suppose it's what he's used to.

On the positive side, though, all this chaos now this probably means a very quiet summer with lots of opportunities to skate.

So, Bob Levey's column yesterday reminded me of some things I've been thinking about off and on. Forgive me if I leap from topic to topic without a clear segue; there really isn't one.

A friend of Amy's, a man who moved here from central Africa about 15 years ago, was upset because he was tired of people "flinching", as he called it, when they encountered him on the street or in convenience stores.

There are many issues wrapped up in what that "flinching" could mean, and I'm going to focus on just one for now: When women who are alone sometimes flinch when they encounter men they don't know.

Women in this country are raised to constantly be on the lookout for potential muggers and rapists. Every guy is a potential attacker. My first few weeks at college, I went to one seminar after another where we were exhorted never to be alone with men we didn't know well, never to walk alone at night, to avoid deserted areas, not to get drunk at fraternity parties without girlfriends around, etc. etc.

When I lived alone, I kept my door locked and bolted at all times, and in walking from my car to my apartment late at night, constantly scanned the area around me for other people. When I see man or a group of men walking towards me if I'm out walking after dark, even on a well-lit public street, my guard goes up.

I'm getting the impression that a lot of well-meaning men have no idea that this stuff goes through women's heads all the time. The boyfriend in the article suggested that Allison get out and walk nearly a mile to a gas station. That's stupid advice even to give to a man, but it just illustrates my point that many men don't understand how differently women see themselves, vulnerability-wise.

Most men don't freak out about walking down a street by themselves. Going to the corner store after dark doesn't even make them think twice. I doubt they usually worry about being attacked by the group of guys walking towards them. When the occasional guy is a little persistent with a girl, he doesn't realize that he's scaring her by not leaving her alone.

I'm not mad at men for this, of course; it's just interesting that the perspective is so different.

[Insert segue here]

Due to smaller-average-side and having less upper-body strength on average than men, women are more often the targets of unsavory characters. It irritates me, but it's a fact.

Many pro-gun advocates see guns, in personal safety situations, as "the great equalizer". It's the one thing that truly makes up for a woman's lack of physical strength in a life-or-death situation. If you're alone in your house, the one QUICKLY effective thing keeping an attacker from getting to you is a gun you know how to use. Frankly, if someone's in the process of breaking into my home, I can't wait around for the police to get there. I'd try, of course. I'd lock myself in a room with the phone and call 911 and hope the police get there before the attacker gets in. But I'll be sitting there holding my gun just in case, thanks.

Some anti-gun folks will say that the attacker will grab the gun away from you before you can use it, or women will wimp out and not use it. In some cases, this may be true. But this is not a reason to take that power away from women who choose to use it wisely.

[...]

It's irritating enough that due to their physical makeup, women are sometimes at a disadvantage. But they've got brains, and it infuriates me when so-called feminists of pro-woman groups encourage women to act like helpless victims.

Take sexual harrassment. I define sexual harrassment like this: if my boss tells me I'll be fired if I don't have sex with him, I've been sexually harrassed. The victimization crowd, though, has stretched the definition to count any off-color remark made in a work context that happens to bother somebody. Like that whole "Mulva" thing at the water cooler that was in the news a while back, or Clarence Thomas allegedly making a remark about his Coke can.

This is ridiculous. Each of these situations could have been resolved with a withering look or a "I really don't want to hear this" comment. Are you trying to tell me that a woman is incapable of telling a guy to please not talk about that stuff, or even of simply walking away without turning to a lawyer or the government for help?! I'm not buying it.

I hate it when anyone encourages any group to consider themselves victims. It's such a defeatist attitude. There are some real victims out there, but a woman who hears a sex joke at the office is not one of them.

[...]

BTW, it's possible that the guy who said that Allison should have been more direct was right. It depends on whether she was really unsure of what to do. If she wanted, all along, for Todd to come pick her up, she should have said that, no question. I'm a big fan of being direct. I'm direct to the point of being embarrassing, I think.

previous index next