The View From My Pedestal

“The practice of putting women on pedestals began to die out when it was discovered that they could give orders better from there.” Betty Grable

Many years ago when I was a divorced mother of two children, I worked for a computer company. Interestingly, I discovered after some years there that I had a reputation as a fun party girl. That seemed odd to me given the fact that in a good year I might go out on an actual date a couple of times. Apparently to the male population, a happy outgoing divorced woman equals a good-time floozy who does things they can only imagine in their techy dreams. The male logic still eludes me.

I did have one fellow in our department who would sing to me at our Friday afternoon beer busts. He also told me one time that he had had a vasectomy. I thought that was a good thing given that he had thinning dirty hair, watery blue eyes, crusty particles on his eyelids, and a belly which protruded nicely to hold up his baggy pants. But it wasn’t a piece of personal information I was particularly interested in knowing. And what do you say when a man tells you something like that? “Oh great. Now I can have unprotected sex with you and not worry about creating lizard-like children.” It isn’t easy being a single woman.

I was at a party one time and discovered I had an amazing talent for tuning out one conversation from an incredibly boring man, to another conversation of a much more interesting man. Floozy traits I guess. I could actually look at Mr. Dull with a pensive considering “I’m really listening to you” face when all the while I was tuning out everything he said so I could tune into someone else's conversation and at the same time consider my options for extricating myself to join the more interesting fellow. It was an out-of-body experience.

The best memory of this party was the conversation I had with yet another boring fellow who declared he was going abroad to “find himself”. Personally, I think if you lost pieces of yourself you’d do well to look for them right at home in a dusty unused corner thereby saving a lot of money and wasted conversations with strangers who don’t care a wit about your losing or finding yourself.

Apparently this fellow saw some very secure, grounded, and admirable traits (I was in a good “space”) in me so he said (and I quote) “I put you on a pedestal”. I thought that was such a novel notion so I tried on my newfound position on top of that pedestal to see what the view was like. I found out something very interesting from up there. The man down below took on aspects of a doormat...sort of a weenie kind of guy who brought out an untapped desire in me to walk all over him in an attempt to kick his fanny into an upright manly position. Sadly, it didn’t work so I climbed down from atop the pedestal and sought out the food tray.

Ah, the life of a good-time, divorced, party girl. You meet people who make you happy to stay home.