I get lost in the inner world of men. Growing up with three sisters and the exponential trifecta of girls on the block may account for my longing for their company, as well as my mystification with much of boy behavior. I'm told I get a great deal wrong by reading too much into too little, or not enough into too much. I read that Boys games are simple, you push, pose, grab and go; play fast and lose with the rules. If life comes to blows it's the ways justifying the means.
Life in my estrogen rich hood may have placed me too close to see what was really happening with the women folk. In my world of women the rules are clear and concrete: domestic housekeeping falls square on her shoulders, giving, care taking and service to the man of the house hold rank over any self serving activity. After all, the men folk were out working, bringing home the bacon and handing it off like a baton for the women folk to fry up in a pan. But, wait, that is not the way it was at all. All of the women on the block worked. My grandmother worked. My mother worked. They were teachers, musicians, secretaries and nurses, they sold Avon and Tupperware, they took on sewing projects and cut hair. While all of the women on the block worked, the standard feeling was that the women's work was secondary and too simple to be considered making bacon.
I pull the weight of two people, I bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and never ever ask for help from any man. Still, how quickly men in my life have stepped up to the verbal rescue with how to advice; wisdom pulled from out of some vacuum. I've had checks written, proscriptions passed during breakfast, I've heard, you need to be told more often than a person need to be told (which is once).