If there is one thing that does not fail to irritate me and get on my nerves like skin down a cheese grater- if only because it hurts- it's when well meaning people assume I have a husband.
But of course, why wouldn't they? When I'm young and reasonably ok looking and kind of intelligent and what on earth is wrong with me...?
Anyway. At risk of sounding like a bitch– men are, by far, the worst offenders when it comes to this. The thought of my neighbor refusing to tell me whether or not my dog was dead, asking continually if my husband was home... that one still kind of stings. Who knows, it may even be the residual catalyst for the reason the whole thing pisses me off so intensely.
The Really Huge TV that we won not long ago- while awesome- has this problem of refusing to pick up the TV channels I rely upon to keep me sane here; ie, ABC2 and ABC3. Thinking this may just be a way to break my son free from his technology obsession, I put up with an ABC–free zone for a whole four weeks.
And by that time I had had just about eeeee–goddamn–nuff of my children whinging and could not get the Antennae Man here quick enough.
It's just a pity that the Antennae Man was such a... well... douche.
Antennae Man happened to show up (four hours late, but hey, who's counting?) on one of those exceptionally rare days when my kids are in daycare and I actually have company. Company of the male–type–date variety.
(Nobody get too excited... male–date–type company lasted the residual three weeks before f*cking off again. For that reason and others, we’ll call him Mr Few and Far Between– Mr FAFB for short.)
Antennae Man was convinced that Mr FAFB was in charge. Every word Antennae Man spoke, he addressed to my date. Mr FAFB, being a pretty cool guy, politely deferred all questioning to me, and made it ridiculously clear that not only did he not live here, he had no idea and nothing beyond a polite interest as to what was going on.
The little lady of the house is not impressed. And he made this point over and over. He made it clear when the Antennae Man first tapped on the front door, and again when he returned from gallivanting on my roof to discuss pricing. Even as the Antennae Man stood tuning the TV, chatting away about how cool it is with it’s wifi connection, and I answered every question he asked with responses such as “I won it through my work” and "Pretty cool, hey? It's all mine!"; this guy still could not direct his conversion toward me, the little lady of the house. Not when there was a big tough man who obviously knew more about the household finances and basic geeky devices in place than I could possibly be expected to.
I actually can't think of a more effective method of making me seethe with frustration and hurt and a sense of impotent unfairness. It's childish, I know, but it almost feels like I'm doing all of this hard work without getting any of the credit for it.
Now, allow me to disclaim myself here– it's certainly not all men, and it doesn't happen on a weekly basis. Just every now and then. Incidents that are far enough removed from one another for it to shock me somewhat when it occurs, but that happen just often enough that it always feels familiar. And it's not always blatant douche–baggery the way it happened to be with Antennae Man. Sometimes it's for far more noble and acceptable reasons– like my neighbor, who simply didn't want to cause undue distress to a female if he didn't have to. (Feel free to argue the potential ramifications of that particular sentiment to women and society amongst yourselves, if you wish. I'm too tired right now, but you never know– I may come back to it later.)
Whatever. Regardless of the sentiment behind it, the whole phenomena still never fails to annoy me. I'm blaming that post-feminist über–woman generation I grew up in. (And more on that coming soon, too.)
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On a totally different note- how awesome are these iFriendly ISGloves from Fiett...? I know. See you Monday, jellybeans... wish me luck. I'm in the ACT for the government workplace bullying review today.