ACT ONE: Life is grim these days, but I try not to be a whiner. After all, who likes a woman who plays the gender card every 10 minutes?

So I sit through the relentless sexist barrage from the Republican Party, with all their knee-slapping jokes about gals and aspirins and birth control, their fervent libertarianism except when it comes to government control over women’s bodies, their grin-and-bear it advice when it comes to pregnancy from rape.

In fact, listening to them, I wonder if the whole GOP isn’t dedicating itself to repealing the 21st century, along with the latter half of the 20th? I wonder, too, looking at all their righteous, authoritarian, white male faces, what they know about women — or men who are different from them. Do we really scare them so much?

(Intermission: an interlude during which mixed beverages may be consumed, legs may be stretched, the first act forgotten)

ACT TWO: Sometimes, she wonders about men and cars. Take these two men she knows — quite well, in fact — who are father and son.

The son is driving a car that has gone from gently used to full-blown jalopy status in a matter of years. She knows this, since she rode home from the airport with him, sitting quietly and uncritically in the backseat. The back tires squeaked and squawked and trilled, and the backseat was just as comfortable as your average wagon train.

Admittedly, she doesn’t know much about cars. No, let’s be frank: She is a moron about cars. But she has opinions about them. Such as, cars should have shock absorbers, dammit.

She mentions this to the father, who promises to talk to the son. It’s a safety hazard, she tells the father. He nods noncommittally. He promptly “forgets” to talk to the son till she reminds him another 29 times.

Finally, the father has a talk with the son. He mumbles all kinds of things about “Mom’s getting all excited about your car” and “why don’t you get it fixed and make her happy?”, accompanied by shrugs and eye-rolls and “you know how excitable women are” glances.

It’s the kind of guy-talk that would have infuriated her years ago. These days, she doesn’t care that much. She thinks they can call her excitable, they can roll their eyes, they can shrug their shoulders — and it really doesn’t matter that much. All she really cares about is that her kid is in a safe car and she’s done everything she can.

After that — well, you know what? There is no after that.

ACT THREE: Parking is a blood sport in Austin. Fine. We all moved here, we can live with it, no big deal.

But then, the city traffic planners decided to improve parking. On busy streets, they changed the normal parking spots to back-in parking. You see a space, you put your car in reverse, you back in. Voila! How hard could it be?

You want my opinion? It’s murder.

I have tried it. Once. I spent a good five minutes backing up, almost sideswiping another two cars, swearing, fretting, sputtering, backing up again with the same results, pretending I’d changed my mind and really, after all, did not need to park since I was a neurosurgeon who was being paged by the hospital and it was an emergency and I needed to save someone’s life. I drove off in a shame spiral, in utter defeat.

Since then, I’ve been complaining to my husband that the whole back-in parking idea was a male vendetta against women. “Have you ever heard any women say they like it?” I demanded over and over while he pretended he was busy. “No, you haven’t — because women hate it!” I said. (Sometimes you have to answer for your spouse.)

Anyway, we were having dinner with our friends John and Helen, and when I raised the dilemma, John assured me I was right.

“It’s because women,” John proclaimed, “hate to go in reverse.”

I sat over my chardonnay, contemplating his wisdom, savoring it.

Women hate to go in reverse. Pithy, profound, true. Women want to go forward, not backward.

Get it, traffic planners?

Get it, Republican Party?

No — let me answer for you, as well. No, you don’t and you couldn’t care less.

P.S. Speaking of going in reverse, that may also be true of my headline. I have no idea whether this blog post goes from tragedy to farce or farce to tragedy. Sometimes, it’s so hard to tell them apart.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

See a loosely related post on how to talk to women so they don’t get offended and beat you up

Here’s my latest Out of Towner column for The New York Times.

I mean it — desperate.

Hordes of men were at the Austin’s original Central Market last night a/k/a Valentine’s Eve. They were in the flower section, eyeballing roses and sunflowers and carnations. They were pawing the bright gold boxes of Godiva (and, if they were at all thoughtful, they were wondering whether their prospective valentines were on a diet, which would be totally sabotaged by a massive box of chocolates and result in a cataclysmic shame spiral that would not bode well for romance. But men in a panic may not be thoughtful until it’s too late).

They stood in line, clutching bouquets wrapped in green paper, looking equal parts sheepish and relieved. “Those poor guys,” my husband said sympathetically, shaking his head. Last year, our zillionth Valentine’s Day together, he somehow (how shall I put it most charitably?) dropped the goddamned ball. “I’m getting you roses this year, of course,” he announced loudly.

Of course, I said.

Looking around at all the male discomfort and borderline despair at an ordinary grocery store, I had to wonder what on earth was going on at lingerie stores around town, too. Surely, it was worse there. I’d seen men in those stores close to major holidays as they fumbled from counter to counter, eyes plastered wide like sacrificial animals at the altar.

“What size does your wife wear?” the saleswomen always asked the men, clearly striking even greater terror and indecision into their hearts.

“Oh, about your size,” most of the men would invariably say to the women behind the counter.

Would it be worse to get an inappropriate negligee that was way too big or way too small? Did my husband have any idea what size I wear in anything? No, he did not. However, he has been extensively prepped on my weight, since I have nightmares about being kidnapped and held hostage while he gave the police the wrong weight (too high, always too high).

We paid for our groceries and walked out into the night. I told myself I should feel bad about all the terror-struck men I’d seen, how I should regret taking part in this disgusting commercial display of hearts and flowers and avarice once every year.

Oh, but a year is a long time and this year, it’s even a day longer than usual. I can’t help myself: I think it’s good to occasionally put the fear of God into some of these guys now and then. They’ll be back to their usual behavior February 15. They’ll have plenty of time to forget once more whether we’re on a diet and whether we wear a size 2 or 22.

Life’s not an endless beer commercial, guys. Once a year, you can man up for a little romance.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Please see #13 on this list about a Valentine’s Day gone horribly wrong

I know exactly where I was and what I was doing 30 years ago. I was having my first baby at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia. I wouldn’t let my husband leave the room and had guaranteed I would hunt him down and kill him if he fainted, as he hinted he might. Smart guy, he stayed conscious.

How lucky we were that day — and for the next three decades. Our gorgeous 8-pound, 2-ounce baby has grown into a beautiful, warm, brilliant and caring young woman. She’s both my daughter and my friend, and I am so proud of her.

In fact, I would say she’s the most perfect child ever — but her younger brother is equally wonderful. My husband and I are so fortunate.

Happy 30th birthday, darlin’. I’ll be seeing you soon.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read a related post on mothers and daughters

I walked in my first Race for the Cure in Dallas in 1996.

By then, my hair was growing back dark and a little wavy after chemo. I met my new friends, fellow breast cancer survivors, and we walked together. We wore Komen T-shirts and hats and plastered ourselves with signs about other friends — either “in honor of” or “in memory of.”

At the end of the race, we gathered close to North Park Mall. (Malls and shopping are important in Dallas. I knew a woman whose mother was buried in an adjacent cemetery, overlooking North Park Mall and its big Neiman-Marcus store. Neiman’s had always been her mother’s favorite place in the world, my friend said, and she was sure her mother rested happily there.)

That day was beautiful and cloudless and inspiring. It happened at that time, early in my cancer survivorship, when I found safety and power in the sheer numbers of other survivors. Together, sweaty and enthusiastic and loud, we were tough and strong and gutsy. It would take more than a malignant bunch of rogue terrorist cells to defeat us.

I didn’t appreciate, then, how wily and relentless cancer was, how it positioned itself like a sharpshooter on the nearby cemetery hill, picking off this survivor, then another, then another. How it turned the “in honor of” tributes into “in memory of,” how so many parade bystanders became participants in later years. There was no safety in our numbers — just the illusion of safety.

Instead, I watched the stage as a group of survivors in pink caps danced and sang to “I Can See Clearly Now” — a song I would never listen to again in quite the same way. One woman, in cap and T-shirt, sang looking up at the blue sky with tears streaming down her cheeks.

A few years passed and we moved to Austin. The only Race for the Cure march I walked in must have been in ’98 or ’99. I went with my friend, Martha, whose cancer was temporarily in remission, and my daughter, who was in high school then.

Along the way, my daughter spoke to another girl from her high school. The girl’s mother had also had breast cancer, my daughter said. I asked how she was doing and my daughter muttered something in a low voice I couldn’t hear. Later, I asked again about her friend’s mother and she told me the mother had died.

More years passed. Martha died, as did most of the other members of my support group. But Komen flourished, spreading pink ribbons everywhere, from professional football teams’ uniforms to the lapels of millions of jackets to cosmetics, perfumes, big buttons. Every October, I came to feel, promised a national outbreak of ribbons, big smiles and determined mass perkiness.

Some of my survivor friends — like Cancer Bitch – loathed Komen for its corporate ties, relentless branding and failure to focus on cancer prevention. I was more guardedly neutral, but disliked the foundation’s simplistic insistence that early detection would always save lives. In the meantime, treatments improved somewhat and more women were diagnosed with early stages of cancer that might never threaten their lives. But 40,000 women a year still died from breast cancer in this country, as marches grew larger and millions of dollars flowed into research.

You know the rest of the story. Komen withdrew its funding of mammograms at Planned Parenthood earlier this week. Then, after a firestorm of controversy, it backed down and reinstated funding. This is a foundation that recognizes a PR and financial debacle when it happens.

So, we’re back to the status quo — except we’re not. Because of right-wing politics, an organization dedicated to women’s health was willing to ignore the needs of poor women, until it became too uncomfortable to continue.

You can’t forget something you know, can you? It’s like a cancer diagnosis, marking you forever. It’s like hearing “I Can See Clearly Now” in a different way and never being able to go back to your original interpretation.

Speaking for myself, I’ve marched in my last Komen march and given the group my last dime. I can see clearly now and I’m not about to forget.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)
Read a related post, your bumper sticker and your attitude offend me

I have been thinking about Sir Winston Churchill and The National Lampoon recently.

I think of the two simultaneously because one of the best pieces the NL ever did was on Churchill. It took all the stories about him that featured witty ripostes and exchanged the witticisms for vulgarities.

So, for example, the famous story about Churchill and Lady Astor, in which she says if he were her husband, she’d poison his coffee, and he replies if she were his wife, he’d drink it. In the NL version, he responds, “If you were my wife, I’d beat the shit out of you.”

Similarly, the famous hand gesture of V for victory becomes a one-finger salute. And Churchill’s correspondence with George Bernard Shaw (“Here are two tickets to my play. Bring a friend if you have one,” then, “Coming to your second performance, if you have one”) ends differently. “You and your play can go fuck yourselves,” the NL Churchill replies.

Well, you get the picture. The point is, I have days — many, many days, to be precise — when I realize my dreams of Churchillian wit inevitably plummet into my real-life behavior that resembles only the NL version of Churchill.

It happened again recently. Here was the problem. I got a new iPhone, but my husband didn’t.

That was because he’d gotten a new one several months ago and I hadn’t. So I was overdue, my iPhone repeatedly died on me, it was Christmas, what the heck.

I liked the new phone and all that. I mean, it was fine. It worked. Big deal. When it comes to technology, I am not an emotional person.

But my husband kept hanging over me and my new phone, like metal filings over a magnet.

“Do you know about Siri?” he asked.

Of course I knew about Siri. Everybody in the universe knows about Siri, that disembodied iPhone voice with the highest IQ in history who can tell you anything you need to know. Ho-hum, wake me up when you say something interesting.

“Yeah,” I said.

So, he grabbed my phone and started asking Siri all kinds of questions about the weather, even though all you had to do was open the door and walk outside to find out.

“This is just unbelievable,” he said.

I nodded noncommittally and we exchanged one of those you’re crazy and I’ll never understand you glances that pass occasionally between men and women, usually after a dramatic new haircut has gone unnoticed or a Three Stooges movie doesn’t elicit wild laughter. You know, one of those over-the-insurmountable chasm looks.

“Maybe it’s a chick thing,” I said, “but I don’t like machines talking to me.”

“That’s sad,” he said.

A few weeks passed and I forgot all about Siri and didn’t miss her at all. I had lots of other important things going on, even if I can’t remember what they were. Important!

As usual, my husband and I ended up on a Saturday morning careening toward starvation, with an empty refrigerator staring back at us and no restaurant prospects in mind. I grabbed my iPhone and went to Yelp.

“Why don’t you ask Siri?” my husband said, going into his high-tech heebie-jeebies.

Jesus. Like I needed a technology coach. I grudgingly put my phone to my ear and asked about restaurants. Siri didn’t say a thing. Bitch.

“You’re doing it wrong,” my husband said.

He grabbed my phone and I started screaming. Leave me alone! Stop hanging over me and my fucking iPhone! I hate Siri! I have low-blood sugar! If I don’t eat soon, I’m going to be dangerous!

“Siri, why is Ruth so angry?” my husband asked.

“Shut up, Siri! It’s none of your goddamned business!”

Later, after we’d eaten lunch, he told me Siri had referred him to a number of websites about a person named Ruth being angry, but she hadn’t really been terribly helpful. This was because, I pointed out, Siri had been the problem in the first place.

After that, I realized that I wasn’t doomed to be the National Lampoon version of Winston Churchill; I was doomed to be the National Lampoon version of myself. Truth is, I don’t have another version — and, by the way, Siri can go fuck herself.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read one of my favorite posts on going all power-to-the-people every time I fly coach

I began to sniff and sneeze. Sometimes, I coughed. My husband said my voice sounded “weird.”

It was a cold, I decided. I made a halfhearted attempt to find Kleenex. Nothing doing, nada. We are not the kind of family who stocks Kleenex, although we usually have a fair supply of toilet paper. Fortunately, though, we do have lots of paper napkins in pastel colors.

It’s hard to maintain your dignity while you are constantly blowing your nose into a series of damp, lime-colored paper napkins, but I gave it my best shot. I am Scots-Irish, I am tough, I don’t whine more than is absolutely necessary. That’s what made this country great: People who don’t whine about colds.

The days pass, the humid lime-colored napkins are everywhere, clinging to the floor, to the bottom of my socks as I pad drearily from room to room. My husband, being a smart guy, leaves town for some talk in Ohio. When he departs, he is sniffling, too.

“You sound horrible,” my friend Melissa says when I postpone lunch.

“I have a cold,” I say.

“It doesn’t sound like a cold,” Melissa says. “It sounds like cedar fever. Everybody has cedar fever right now. You should be taking Allegra — ”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Get the time release capsules. Allegra! You got that?”

“Yeah,” I say.

I am nothing if not malleable when I’m sick. I rally to comb my hair, get dressed and drive to a pharmacy. I haven’t been out of the condo in three days. For someone with a cold or cedar fever, a virtual recluse with a lime paper napkin habit, a drugstore is a wondrous place. I am out in the world again!

I buy Allegra, after consulting with the young woman behind the counter. “You’re, like, the third person I’ve dealt with today with this problem,” she says. “You sound just like the rest of them.”

“How do I know if I have a cold or cedar fever?” I ask.

“Same difference,” she says.

I go home and start popping Allegra. I am always happier when I’m developing an expensive new drug habit. Every little capsule gives me a bit of hope.

“What do you mean you’re taking Allegra?” my friend Betsy wants to know when we take our weekly walk.

“I have cedar fever,” I say.

“You do not!” Betsy’s voice rises to a soft bellow. “You have lived here how many years — ”

“Sixteen — ”

” — sixteen years and you’ve never had cedar fever before! I’ve never heard you complain about cedar fever! You have a cold. That’s all. A cold!”

We continue our walk, swapping stories about politics and people we know and people we don’t know. We are both disgusted by Republicans; we always agree on that.

I pop Allegra, I move on to light-blue napkins, my husband comes back from Ohio. Two friends tell me that, since I’m not running a fever, I definitely do not have a cold. My husband says that diagnosis is swill. He says he’s felt much better since his trip. Maybe I should go to Ohio, too.

All this advice and this mucus make me philosophical. I recall that, when I was younger, I used to think pregnant women were weird. I didn’t understand, till I got pregnant myself, that this isn’t true. Pregnant women aren’t weird at all. It’s just that their pregnancy excites everybody else and makes everyone around them weird.

Similarly, getting a cold or cedar fever. Since I am Scots-Irish and I don’t complain, I am not weird or boring. It’s just that everyone around me is driving me crazy. Next time I get sick, I’m keeping it a secret.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read one of my favorite posts about the neti pot blues

When I grew up in the 1950s, everything was clear. Men and women were very different creatures. Women cleaned the house and watched soap operas and cried. Men worked and watched sports and had no emotions (unless their team won a big game or something).

Everything changed in the ’70s. Your sex didn’t matter, really! Men and women were all the same, apart from an anatomical curlicue here and there. They had just been acculturated into thinking they were different. As usual, society was to blame.

About that time, women learned they were oppressed and stopped shaving their legs for a while. But men were oppressed, too! some bright guy opined. They were tired of working and being strong and manly all the time. To compensate, they started wearing leisure suits and gold neckchains and choking up on a regular basis.

(Do you understand now why the 70s were one of the least appetizing decades on record? How many women truly yearned for a man who cried more than they did and asked to borrow their jewelry?)

Thirty, 40 years later, we are so enlightened about the differences between the sexes that we now call them genders, instead. Soap operas are gone and everybody gets to hug and men can can cry sometimes, assuming they are Republicans and like to start wars.

Anyway, we may not have regressed to the 1950s, but sometimes I do have a startling realization that my parents’ generation got a few things right when it came to men and women. Namely, when I see two of the main men in my life — that would be my husband and son — go into one of their A Man’s Gotta Do What a Man’s Got to Do moments, I could close my eyes and it’s 1955 again.

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. You know what I’m talking about. The male’s jaw tightens, his eyes narrow, his stance is on alert. The more dire the circumstances, the more ridiculous or outrageous the cause, the more he won’t be argued with. The more any woman wails, the more righteous his cause and implacable his desire. He rebuffs any arguments that what he’s planning to do is:

1) stupid;

2) not worth doing by any competent, sane human being;

3) hazardous;

4) did I mention stupid enough times?

No. Mention any of these complaints and his jaw gets tighter, his eyes slittier, his ears completely deaf.

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!  Just think about it. If we didn’t have this cultural ethos, we wouldn’t have had the bloodbath at the Alamo or John Wayne movies or shock-and-awe in Iraq or violent video games or professional football.

I thought about all of that recently, when it was cold and wet and windy. The perfect day to stay indoors, I thought. How wrong, how very female I was. That day, it turned out, the men had to do what the men had to do — and what the men had to do was play golf.

Raining, freezing cold, stupid, miserable, ridiculous, golf? Were they crazy?

As a veteran of the battle of the sexes/genders of the ’50s, the ’70s, and the 21st century, I knew what I had to do. Sometimes, what a woman’s gotta do is keep her mouth shut and bide her time.

The road to I told you so can be long, but oh, so rewarding. Generations of female forbearers have taught me that.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Please! Read about a few of those delicious I Told You So moments.

So, in September, my husband and I gave a talk together about our experiences with breast cancer. It’s here.

When we were putting the talk together, he complained that I got all the great lines You know what? He was right. Mea culpa and all that.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read one of my favorite posts about the decision to get scalped

Overnight, our gym is mobbed and bulging. That’s because the January people are here.

They are bright-eyed, eager and determined. This year — 2012! — they are going to change. They will lose weight, gain muscle, increase lung capacity. They will pound the treadmills, raise the weights, fling themselves into warrior two position.

Here and there, among the teeming crowd of January enthusiasts, you will see the rest of us. We were here in December and we’ll be here in February — assuming the January people don’t drive us nuts.

We’re not as enthusiastic as the January people. We’re really kind of, well, resigned.  We know our body-mass index is as good as it’s ever going to be (which isn’t that great, frankly.)

We don’t get high from exercise. We just know that if we keep showing up, we’ll slow the deterioration a little.

But don’t tell that to the January people. They look exalted under their sheen of sweat. Their ears are iPodded and their clothes are colorful and coordinated. They are excited because 2012 is their year, which is why they have prepaid a deluxe year-long membership at the gym.

All their zest and determination will last, well, a couple of weeks. Then, gradually, you’ll begin to see the changes. The exuberant light in their eyes will die slowly — or suddenly. The pounds will cling stubbornly in all the wrong places.

In the cold winter light, they will see the gym for what it really is: a place of sweat and drudgery that smells kind of funky.

By late February, the January people will have thinned out. The rest of us will go back to normal, pleased to have more room, relieved not to be swamped by such rampant, ultimately tragic enthusiasm.

Only a few January people will last into the summer. By then, they will have exchange their fervent passion for grim determination. Their workout clothes will be wrinkled and sweat-stained.

In December of 2012, you will find yourself chatting with somebody at the gym who rolls her eyes and says she’s heard horror stories about the hordes of January people. As you agree, you look at her more closely. You realize she’s one of the few January ’12 people who persisted. But how did she get this cynical, this beaten, this badly dressed so quickly?

“Don’t worry,” you tell her. “They’re almost always gone by February.”

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read one of my favorite posts about communication skills of the long-married