Last night Potvin and I concluded that together we constituted 3/4s of a boy. This is because we successfully fixed the headlamp on my bicycle helmet. (I should note that this accomplishment was achieved in the cooperative, egalitarian manner inherent to our sex.)
I'm so sick of trying to "fix" things and breaking into a cold sweat because I know I'm going to fail. It's especially painful because I have all of these memories of my dad giving me gender tests when I was little, which involved handing me some gadget and asking me to figure it out, and then when I couldn't, telling me it was because I wasn't a boy. Remember those times when the screen door was broken and your dad waits in the car for 20 minutes as you try to figure out how to fix it, tears streaming down your cheeks because you know you're vaginally doomed? Welcome to my childhood.
The best part about those episodes was that sometimes what I was trying to fix was some contraption that my dad had invented by himself, that involved his own highly personal and subjective logic. He wanted everyone to understand his own special inventions. Which is fine, they were always fun and creative. But they were HIS. Why should I feel bad because I didn't understand his way of doing things? When was the last time he asked me to invent a solution myself, instead of watching him as he demonstrated the "right" way?
I'm lucky I was born vaginal. What if I actually had been expected to live up to this shit?
Oh man...he told you it was b/c you weren't a boy? That's nuts.
But if it makes you feel any better my dad once asked me to look up the tire pressure on our car using that little chart on the inside edge of the car door. After telling him I couldn't find the number he wanted he informed me that I was "totally useless."
Posted by: getgreg | January 03, 2007 at 12:52 PM