#2 Daughter is a serious-minded person. I don’t mean dull or humorless; I just mean she doesn’t take things lightly.
She works in an office where all the other workers are not just male, they’re defiantly male. They have to display how BOY they are. They can’t talk about sports without many HAR-HAR-HARs, for example.
I asked her if, when they talk about “that great play last night”, if she ever said something like, “Oh, you mean Hamlet on PBS? That WAS good!”
She said she did something like that once. Then, after a few seconds of basking in the memory, she said,
They didn’t laugh, but I did.
This post is part of Linda G. Hills weekly blog hop, One-Liner Wednesday. If you have a one-liner or just like them, follow the link.
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: A deliberate pretense of misunderstanding.
MA
Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt
December 15, 2021 at 11:31amIrony. They probably thought she was daft. Sounds like she knows how to defend herself. Must be exhausting. I have some experience with being surrounded by all males in my various jobs – hard science is still heavily male, and individual women stand out, but the majority do something else.
A rare woman engineering professor at U. Wisconsin-Madison told me this was because when a male engineering student got a C, he signed up for the next course; when a female engineering student got a C, she dropped out. Because it was already on the edge with her family and friends, and that C was the last drop, so she couldn’t take it any more unless she was very good. That was back in the 1970s; things are a bit better now, but not that much in the higher levels of hard science.
Marian Allen
December 15, 2021 at 2:11pmShe says it IS exhausting. And, yes, she does know how to defend herself. She looks delicate, but she’s made of tempered steel.
Michael Hodges
December 15, 2021 at 11:35amA pretense of misunderstanding…
Years ago on New Years Eve in London, I was with a large group of friends and we were headed to Trafalgar Square. The sidewalks were packed, and as we passed through one crowded area a young woman from our group was sort of “snagged” by a group of guys who were clearly half-inebriated. She kept trying to shrug them off, and they weren’t having any of it: “Come on, luv, hang wi’ us! Come onnnnn…!”
Unfortunately for me our group was speeding forward and could NOT see what was happening, Even more unfortunately for me, there were eight of them, all about my size. VERY much the soccer hooligan stereotype.
I immediately was “drunk” too, staggering in, slurring my words. The leader of the group had dreadlocks and I kept insisting that he was Bob Marley while slowly inserting myself between the woman and the rest of them. I was laughing and kept repeating “I LOVE you, man — I’ve got ALL your albums, man, ALL of ’em! You’re the BEST!”
It confused them enough, the leader saying “I’m not fucking Elvis, you weirdo,” that with her safe(ish)ly behind me, I started backing us up until other walkers came between us.
Marian Allen
December 15, 2021 at 2:13pmBRILLIANT!
Dan Antion
December 18, 2021 at 8:17pmI love your family 🙂