 This Woman's Experience is a series of blog posts about what growing up, and life in general, was like for women who were born before 1965. It's intended to show the young women of today how it used to be. We can't go, and we can't let them, go backward.
When I was in my early twenties, I divorced my first husband after three years of marriage. He had this rather bad habit of sleeping with just about any woman he liked the looks of - if he could. If you've read this series so far, you know that it was drilled into me to be a 'good wife' and overlook a lot. We got married, had a two-week honeymoon (That was its own disaster - a story for another day), and immediately moved from New Jersey to the panhandle of Florida. The problems began right away. He'd say he had to work late, then come in at 2 AM reeking of beer, saying he and another guy he'd been working with were just too wired afterward to go home and sleep. Oh, a young alcoholic, you'll no doubt surmise. This was in the late seventies. There were no cell phones, no internet. I didn't dare call his work to ask to speak to him. I was afraid to. I told myself at the time it was because I didn't want to seem like an insecure wife and cause his buddies to tease him about his 'nagging' spouse. Years later, I acknowledged the real reason was I was afraid of what I'd find out. Which I eventually did find out anyway. Get ready for a shocker - he wasn't working late. The beer ploy had been concocted and perfected by him and his friends when they were in college. Clearly, it only worked when they'd managed to find girlfriends/spouses like me - women with zero confidence or self-worth. He'd make dates and take women out after work. Or he'd go to a bar and pick one up, then go back to her place - or do it in the car if she had nowhere for them to go. And he'd make sure to have beer, but doubly made sure his clothes smelled of it, too, to cover up any perfume or other - eh-hem - residual odors. We moved six times in those few years of marriage. Everywhere we lived, weird circumstances happened that he'd explain away. I, being too intimidated, too insecure, too whatever - would buy the stupid explanation and just internalize the hurt. Squash it far down and pretend I didn't know what I was starting to understand very well. At the same time, he began calling me horrible names, criticized my looks (called me a whale body), and refused to have sex with me. (in retrospect, that was a blessing, as Lord knows what diseases he might have steeped himself in.) Women called the house giggling and asking to speak with him. Women would show up at our front door and, when I answered it, would have shocked expressions on their faces and mumble some hasty response like, "Oh, I must have the wrong apartment." Once, my ex ran past me to answer the door, stepped outside with the woman, took a few minutes talking to her, then came back and told me she was looking for - whatever else - and he merely tried to help her out. A stronger woman would have said bullshit to herself and gone right out there with her arms crossed and wedge herself into their 'conversation'. I was too afraid to do that. To find out what was going on. I pushed it back, way back, in my brain and pretended everything was fine. I understand too well - now - the reasons I did that. There are so many stories I could tell about that man and his cheating, but the blog post would be way too long. Some were actually pretty hilarious in hindsight, though not this one - I found a fake fingernail between the sheets of our bed when I felt something against my leg. (I didn't have fake fingernails.) I'll never forget what it looked like - lavender/purplish polish, and it had been chewed a bit. When I confronted him about it, he blamed it on our roommate (one of his college buddies who had his own room and bathroom on the other side of the apartment.) I knew that was bullshit, but accepted his excuse and kept that fake fingernail in the bottom of my jewelry box for years to prove to myself I hadn't imagined it. After three years of his baloney, I finally left him. It wasn't easy. Thank God we were in Hawaii by then. I loved it there. The point of this is not to garner pity for me. Legions of people have far worse happen to them - mine don't even tip the scale. I am long over all these things, made my changes, and am a different person now. The point of this is to illustrate the bad choices a person makes when they are insecure and don't think they matter at all. They'll put up with almost anything, because they don't feel they deserve anything better. Insecurity begets more insecurity, which begets really, really, stupid life choices. By the way, I wasn't done with my stupid life choices. I went on to make many more before I realized I could change my life. Don't belittle or denigrate your children - especially not your daughters. It has life-long, drastic consequences. Thank you.
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 This Woman's Experience is a series of blog posts about what growing up, and life in general, was like for women who were born before 1965. It's intended to show the young women of today how it used to be. They need to know this.
When my first ex and I were newly married (1978), we attended a work party with some of his new (male) work acquaintances. Everyone was in their early twenties. Some of the guys were married also, and their wives, like me, dutifully stood in a conversation group with them, nodding along like vapid bobble heads. It was what you did back then. Many of us had jobs, too, but no one ever asked about those, or our lives, or anything else concerning us. It was all about the men. My ex went to get another drink, and one of the other men started staring at me. It became uncomfortable enough that I'm sure I was turning red. Finally, I asked him why (in a mousy little voice) he was doing it. He smiled a weird, sideways smirky smile and said, "I'm just waiting for the pencils to drop." The other men laughed uproariously with him. The women didn't say a word. I was pretty naive and did not understand the reference. I gave him a questioning look that, I think - in retrospect - he interpreted as an admonishment. At least I hope so. But I just felt stupid and embarrassed. I didn't know what he'd said to me. I sensed it was inappropriate and knew I couldn't tell my then husband, or it might cause a problem at the work party. And of course, my duty was to not disrupt or cause issues. My duty was to be a stepford-type wife. So I said nothing. There was no internet then. No where to look up such a thing. I mean, I wasn't about to ask the local librarian about that one. We'd moved far away from our families and friends. So I let it go. Years later, I heard a reference to the same type joke and finally understood it. The guy was commenting on my breasts. They were perky. Of course they were. I was twenty. I suppose it doesn't seem like a life-changing event - and it wasn't. It was just one more little thing that we used to put up with. Today's 20-year old woman would likely have told the jerk to go eff himself, but back then it was drilled into many of us that a wife offending or disrespecting (by not tolerating) his co-worker could have dire consequences for a young man's advancement prospects. So we smiled pleasantly.  Greed. Power. Money.
The cause of most human atrocities are rooted in those three words. The pursuit of more money, always more, relentlessly more, is a twisted sickness that infects people. Money buys power. Money buys respect. Money buys - safety? Maybe not. Author Tom Straw has a smart defense attorney, Macie Wild - trying to prove her client's innocence on a murder charge - teaming up with an ex-cop, Gunnar Cody, who has serious skills (think Jack Reacher skills) and a great surveillance set-up, plus a scary-good IT guy - when her case intersects with his work. Unfortunately, Wild's and Cody's investigation exposes them to the rotten, brutal, and deadly underworld of Russian oligarchs, whose insane amounts of stolen money and the subsequent influence it buys - even in the supposedly 'safest' corners of the American legal system - turns their investigation into a dangerous adventure. There's a lot of action - at times, it felt I was inside a Mission Impossible movie - and there is a romantic element. What Straw does nicely is making the romantic element develop slowly, so when the two of them actually do something about it, it feels natural, more realistic - more deserved. Too many other novels of this type simply throw the characters into bed as soon as possible, which always feels forced and takes me out of the story. Straw doesn't overdo it, either. In the end, Macie, for all her worldly experience to date, is shocked by the extent that money can corrupt. It's sick, and it's a condemnation of humanity - that in thousands of years of watching people screw themselves and entire populations in the pursuit of power and money - most of today's humans haven't learned a thing. There were a couple of drawbacks. Straw's writing style in this novel is to combine different characters' dialogue, thoughts, and actions into single paragraphs, which made me have to frequently go back and reread for clarity. Who said that? Wait. Who thought that? Wait. Who did that? I would have read this book much faster if that hadn't been an issue. The other was Cody's motivation to pretty much drop everything - from the get-go - to spend his time, resources, and money to help Macie with her case. It wasn't explained, and, I felt, didn't make sense. He didn't seem the kind of guy to fall head-over-heels in love at first sight and, because of that, risk his life and his resources in response. But, I can suspend disbelief when the story is interesting, so - I did.  This is an essay from my book, A Little Bit Sideways. It's about us. Americans. We are unique, to say the least. Happy 4th, Everybody!
*** I once went to a Fourth of July celebration concert with an English friend. When I invited her, she said, “Oh, sure. Gloating’s far more fun when the losers are present.” Huh. I hadn’t thought about the Fourth from a British person’s perspective. It made me consider how little we modern day Americans know about the personalities of the people who were responsible for that little tiff we call the American Revolution. We were ticked off by King George’s government treating the American colonies as though they were property. As if! How dare they! Oh, wait. Technically, the colonies were. But still. The British had the nerve to levy taxes on needed supplies like paper, paint, glass, and tea. Never mind that the taxes were supposed to help pay off the debt from the French and Indian War. In North America and the Caribbean, it was a battle against the French for control of those colonies. The American colonists hated the notion of the French taking over, so England really was fighting for their cause as well. And it was pretty darn pricey. In fact, so staggering a debt, that it nearly destroyed the English government. The colonists didn’t care. Already, the fledgling & soon-to-be rebellious ones conveniently forgot they almost had to learn French and step up their game in the kitchen. And who wouldn’t want to forget? That’s a lot of pressure—going from preparing basic grub (Sorry, English) to excelling in wine reductions, crème fraiche, and escargot. King George III was a little unstable—not completely mad yet, but King Louis XV? Despite being known as the beloved, Louis wasn’t. (It’s kind of like how every North Korean adores Kim Jong Un.) Louis was—as were all the Louies—weird. And surprisingly progressive by today’s standards. He was the first one to send a transvestite to spy on the Russians. Luckily for us, Louis never met a war he couldn’t lose. Might it have had something to do with too much wine and men wearing silk stockings? Back to our British overlords. By 1770, only the tea tax remained. Big deal, right? Depends on how much you know about human beverage history. And lucky for you, I’ve done extensive research. Tea was the first non-alcoholic drink in the Western world that wouldn’t make you sick. See, back in those days, everybody knew if you drank water, you could die. They didn’t understand the why. Until tea, everybody drank beer or wine. Seriously. Even the kids. It’s a miracle the human race didn’t stagger its way into cave walls and off cliffs, stab themselves with poisoned arrows, and get dizzy and tumble down the pyramids to extinction. So tea was a big deal. It enabled the industrial revolution, because sober people can be trusted around machinery. Drunk people, not so much. But perhaps England’s biggest mistake in all of this was allowing volunteers to go populate the New World in the first place. They should have assigned people to go instead. Because the people who would volunteer to leave everyone and everything they know to sail for months to an uncertain fate carry a certain daring adventure gene. No—it’s not really a gene. Don’t make me roll my eyes at you. All of us Americans, back then and now, carry this thing I’m calling a gene. Americans come from ancestors who dared to leave home and try something new. People seeking freedom from other people telling them what to do or believe. As a result, by default—we Americans are independent. Curious. Brave. Brash. Restless. Self-motivated. Inventive. It’s why our spirit is admired around the world. The most adventurous people from all the other countries chose to come here, effectively diminishing their home country’s gene pools of such traits. We can’t help being rebellious. It’s in our blood. So, of course that pesky tea tax was going to piss them off royally. There was a bit more to it than that, but I don’t want to overstay my welcome in the history aisle. My fellow Americans, this is an awesome responsibility. Our demanding that they—whoever they are (Oops, it’s the government, don’t tell anyone)--do something (This is outrageous!) is constantly at war with our inner rebel that doesn’t want anybody messing with our lives. Until we break an axle in a deep pothole. Why the heck can’t these fools manage to fill a hole?! Or dozens of people fall ill from salmonella in a restaurant. Why can’t THEY make sure these places serve safe food?! Or your baby gets lead poisoning from chewing on an imported toy. Why can’t THEY test these things before they allow them into our country?! Nothing’s changed. We want it both ways. And that’s impossible. Happy Fourth of July, you rebel, you.  This Woman's Experience is a series of blog posts about what growing up, and life in general, was like for women who were born before 1965. It's intended to show the young women of today how it used to be. They need to know this.
Today's post is from Ann Meier, who, after the experience she describes here, went on to earn a Ph.D. in psychology. More info on Ann follows her post. Here's Ann: I can’t do math. As a straight A student, I never lacked confidence in my academic abilities. I found something of interest in every class I took. I know, it’s disgusting, right? I loved ninth grade algebra. In high school, I moved on to tenth grade geometry. I was very interested in art at the time, so the shapes, lines, and angles intrigued me. The first semester, my teacher was a woman. I earned three As for the first three six-week grading periods. My schedule changed for second semester, and my new geometry teacher was a man. My first six weeks with him, I earned an A. I still had confidence in my ability to do math. The second six weeks. my grade dropped to a B, and the third six weeks, I received the only C grade of my high school years. What happened? My male teacher believed girls weren’t capable of understanding mathematics. He said things like, ‘this is an easy girl-type problem’ or ‘this is a difficult concept, I’ll need a boy to answer this question.’ Our teacher loved to call a girl to the blackboard to work a problem, and then confuse her to the point of tears. A week didn’t go by without one of us crying in front of the class. Unbelievable, right? Yet it happened. His constant discounting of girls’ ability to do math, and his relentless taunting convinced me. I’m a girl. I can’t handle math. My grades show the decline in my performance. He killed any interest I had in math. The impact was far-reaching. I avoided all future math classes. No college algebra, no trig, no calculus. In college, I also managed to avoid math by taking science classes. With no math foundation, I found myself playing catch up. When I finally decided I wanted to major in psychology, I hit a huge obstacle with the required statistics classes. Without the goodwill tutoring provided by an incredibly giving classmate, I would have had to give up my chosen field of study. One man and his sexist beliefs made all the difference. And at the time, none of us doubted what he told us. We were girls, and we couldn’t do math. *** Ann Meier lives in Orlando and writes Mysteries with a Theme Park Smile for adults and a companion series for middle grade kids. She was a manager on the Universal Orlando Resort opening team and also worked at Walt Disney World. She has co-authored a college textbook, written journal articles, and worked in human resources for a Fortune 100 company. She earned an undergraduate degree in English from Ball State University and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. |
Author noteI believe the only way to get through the slings and arrows life throws at all of us is to find the humor. Archive
January 2020
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