I was thinking about how different we ladies are from men.
I don’t mean the obvious differences. Wash out your mind.
I mean like if a lady sees a old classmate or somebody else she knew a long time ago, she might say, “Giselda! Oh, look at you! So petite! You haven’t changed a bit. How do you do it?”
But a man will say, “Fred! You fat old (bad word) (starts with f). How’s it hangin’?”
And both Giselda and Fred are happy. But you reverse them greetings, and tell Giselda she’s a fat old bad word, and Fred he’s petite, they will both walk off hoping not to see you for another 20 or 30 years.
And ever notice how, when women take group pictures, if we’re in the front row, we automatically bend our knees and sort of squat, so we won’t block the people behind us? Sometimes we do this when we don’t even have anybody behind us.
Men never do. They just stand there looking blank until somebody tells them to smile — and no, it ain’t funny to sneakily extend their middle finger.
I was telling my mother-in-law Ms. Larda about this while we are talking on the phone and drinking our morning coffee, like we do sometimes.
She is getting ready to have her picture taken with the Parish Altar Angels for the church bulletin, and she says she’s glad I told her this, and she ain’t going to squat, and all her fingers will behave themselves.
“Speaking of the Altar Angels, I got news,” she says. “We are expanding.”
“So what’s new bout that?” I ask.
“Very funny. This ain’t about weight, Modine. Every single human being in this entire city is getting fatter, and that will keep up until Mardi Gras.”
Well, yeah. I know this. People everywhere else in this country stuff theirselves from Halloween through Thanksgiving through Christmas, but on New Year’s Day, they make resolutions to lose weight. And they do. But in New Orleans, we keep up the eating all the way through Mardi Gras. And after that we don’t eat hardly anything during the 40 days of Lent, which probably saves us from actually exploding in the streets.
“This got nothing to do with that,” says Ms. Larda. “There are a lot of Angels now, and we decided we need to expand our good works. So we’re going to start participating in healthy bosom month or whatever they call it.”
I happen to know it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month and it’s way off in October. I tell her that.
“Yeh, and you are supposed to wear pink that month. So I got to get some pink clothes to wear by then.”
“Wonder why they chose pink,” I say.
“I asked the very same question at our board meeting. There are 12 of us on the board, and we always meet over dinner in a private room at this restaurant I ain’t going to name.
“Anyway, I ask why pink, and somebody says, ‘Because nipples are pink.’ And somebody else says, ‘Mine ain’t pink. They’re more beige.’ And automatically, we all look down inside the fronts of our shirts trying to see the color of our nipples.
“Well, just at that moment, the waiter stepped into the room to ask if everything was all right. But he sees us all staring down our shirts and he turns around and leaves.
“So if you hear anybody talk about the Angels being perverts, please set them straight,” she says.
“I’ll tell them you were all just checking your nipples for a good cause,” I say.
“Correct,” she says.
I guess that’s another thing men don’t do.
