ON TALKING TO MYSELF

 

I just realized that I talk to myself very harshly sometime.  It’s usually over something stupid I’ve done…hopefully sans audience.

 

This time – as seems to happen most frequently, I was in the car, and the car was about number 127 in a line of drivers who should really have been someplace besides waiting to make a left turn off Coldwater Canyon.  (Of course I was the only one using a turn indicator.) 

 

I mean really!  At  11 o’clock in the morning, what were all these folks doing crowding the streets when I was in a hurry!

 

I did all the reasonable things to distract myselfl – adjusted the mirrors again, checked my phone messages –  answered a couple Don’t yell at me.  I was going absolutely no place at the moment, therefore my driving did not need my attention. 

 The need to get out of this line did! 

I considered the situation.  First I uttered unfriendly things at all those drivers who were where I wanted to be – at the head of the line.  That did me no good at all, so I spoke quietly to myself about wasted energy and settled in for long wait…maybe even a minute or two!

hen HE showed up.  A man driving a VERY large SUV pulled in behind me…gunned his motor a few times and then began to honk.

 

“Damn and Blast!” I shrieked quietly.  That did nothing too, and he  kept his hand on the horn while the light changed twice and we were still not through.

Here’s the thing…I am NOT noted for my patience, and two lights worth of horn honking was more than I felt I should have to endure.,

So I made what was probably an illegal U turn and headed back up Coldwater, eyes darting desperately back and forth while I looked for a street that looked big enough to take me to Laurel Canyon.

 “Yey”! I yelled joyfully to my empty car.  “Got one!””

 I swung the car triumphantly along this new promising road….”Good girl.” I told me.  And I smiled.

Half a block later I ran into – surprise! – a cul-de-sac!

I gritted my teeth and headed back up the road I had just driven down.   I made a right turn.  I ran into a DEAD END sign.  Well, not literally ran into but you understand.

Now if this were a one-time thing I might have taken it all fairly casually.  But it isn’t.  It seems to me that every time I try to find a way around some kind of traffic congestion, I run into streets blocked by either the L.A. river – with or without water — or the freeway…any old freeway will do, they all seem to conspire against me.

 I have begun to take this personally.

What’s even worse, I’ve begun to berate myself LOUDLY for the stupidity that allows me to make this same mistake over and over and over again.

 Today was a killer.

 “YOU,” I said loudly to me, ”are an IDIOT!”  And just to reinforce the words, I banged the steering wheel and hurt my hand.

 Okay.  Due to restraints that I have put on myself I cannot quote a lot of the conversation that I had with me in the next few minutes.  But I can tell you that if anyone else had used that language in my presence, we would no longer be friends.

I realized that I was acting irrationally.  I knew that because people passing in the opposite direction were pointed at the (apparently) crazy lady who was making wild gestures and ugly faces as she roared down the road.

 Soon, another promising street show up on my left, I turned on it.  It DID go through to a main street.

 Hallelujah!

Unfortunately, that main street was Coldwater Canyon, where all of this lunacy began.

 There were more cars at the light than when I started.  Most of them were still not flashing turn signals. 

It was now seven minutes later than when I started all this.  I had discovered four new streets that went nowhere, broken a number of my resolutions and owed my swear jar a dollar and a half.  I also had a VERY sore throat.

I got in the line.

 

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 PART TWO

 I have been accuse, on more than one occasion, of THINKING LIKE A MAN.  Usually this is said by some ill advised gentleman who means it as a compliment,  I do not normally take it as such.

HOWEVER…

 Right now I have to say that I am with the guys.   I don’t know what it is we women want.

Let me first say that I am with my sisters when it comes to demanding respect in the work place.  I insist that appearance should never be a deciding factor in how a woman succeeds – or doesn’t – because she is prettier than another female.

I find it demeaning for a man to address a co-worker in cutesy little terms of endearment like sweetheart or honey etc. – and there should be no little pats and pinches…EVER.

But come on.

As a society, we women – and to a lesser degree men – spend billlllllions on cosmetics, sometimes the kind we apply to our bodies and sometimes the kind we pay a plastic surgeon to cut off or build up.  Anyway, it is all done with the certain goal of making our appearance pleasing to the world, and to ourselves.

Another HOWEVER.

Once we have achieved our optimum degree of beautifulness, we put in place some very severe rules on who can say what to whom. And when.  And where. 

Now back to this bit with the President.

In a speech to a group of wealthy donors in Washington a week or so ago, he spoke glowingly of Kamal Harris, the California attorney general.  He called her brilliant and efficient and lots of other professional words we would all like to have ascribed to our job performances.

And then he made a mistake.  He said that she did all that while being “the best looking attorney general in the country.”

He didn’t suggest that she got where she was in life by using the casting couch or anything of the sort.  He just said that his good buddy  was a nice looking woman.

Well, we women can’t let him get away with that can we?  Immediately Tweeters Tweeted, Facebookers  Booked, and the whole episode went soaring around the world.. 

The President complimented a woman on her appearance.   What could he have been thinking?  Was he taking a subtle swipe at all the women he has engaged to help him do his job?  Did he have a political death wish?  Something obviously should be done!

Anyone for a public thrashing?

 

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