Why is it that Women have the Wo(e) of Men and Men have the Kind?
A friend’s recent lament about her loving husband of 25 years will serve as example:
She and I are Playmates. Not Hugh Hefner’s brand, though we could have been in our prime, if only he’d shown up with a camera – and a airbrush. Hey, we could totally still grace the pages of the magazine with about 85 photo shop clicks. But I digress.
My friend and I have season tickets to attend plays every couple of months. It’s girls’ night out for two aspiring writers, women with more tales than talent. We laugh, we cry, we appreciate, we applaud. And, in dinner beforehand, we listen to each other.
In the middle of dinner – without wine or dessert in this post holidays’ feast season – her cell phone rang. Dutifully, she scrounged in her purse: “Hi, honey.”
I could hear his diatribe all the way across the booth. I could almost see his wild gestures. I wanted to grab the phone and drop it in my friend’s glass of water, to cool his loudly proclaimed temper.
She gently edged the phone away from her ear, never wavering in her smile. She “mmn-ned’, soothed, and cajoled him out of a lather.
Then, snapping her phone shut with more than gentle fervor, she dumped it in her purse and picked up her fork. Soon, she was murmuring “mmn-n” over the ahi again.
After she’d cheerfully swallowed, she responded to my raised eyebrow inquiry.
It seems that the garage door wouldn’t automatically respond to the clicker’s command. The man seemed not to know about the door release cord hanging down from the garage’s ceiling – in the home where they’d lived for numerous years.
My mouth must have opened – like the garage door wouldn’t – and she went on to explain, “He always does that. He calls to dump ‘situations’, no matter how small or simple, and his frustrations on me if I’m not home to hear it.”
So, Constant Reader, that’s how it goes: Men have the Kind-ness of Women who listen and who sop up the emotion.
Yeah, Women have the Woe of Men – and I didn’t even mention the pain and rigors of childbirth and child-rearing, including raising mankind.
Fortunately for most woe-men, God has given them manKind like lovable Larry to be their helpmates… Guys who believe and love in what St Paul describes as in a Christlike way. Lucky ladies. Jimbo
Supportive, Capable, Reliable, Splendiforous – there are not enough wonderful words to describe Larry. And, I know Jo feels the same about you, Jimbo. We know we are blessed!
We distinctly recall – with a loud argghh! – customers that Larry had in his sales-and-marketing days, who would never fail to call on Friday afternoon.
From about 1:30 – 5:30, in time zones all over the country and Canada.
It was always the same person(s), most often highly self-entitled men, and there was never anything that Larry could do in the moment – or until Monday – to solve the problem.
These wise guys dumped their emotionality on him – and then had a merry week-end. Incredible crap that never ended.
But Larry got wise with voice mail – and had a merry week-end.
I don’t like it when people mess with my husband’s mind. Nor mine and my dear friends’.
As my friend, Susan, says: this was a blog-a-bull