One of the main differences between the sexes is the fear of genital injury. Mainly, men are afraid of it, women are not. That is not to say that women cannot sustain injury to that sensitive region of their bodies, just that they have to be faced with imminent danger (like a Mac truck aiming straight for their panties) before they begin to worry.
Men, on the other hand, see danger in the most innocent situations. Throw a magazine on a man’s lap and wait for the yelling to start. Point in the general direction of the crotch with a knife (perhaps while explaining the proper use of cheese, butter, table and steak knives)and men will scream like banshees, double over, clutch themselves and fall to the floor, where they will remain in a fetal position until you convince them that all sharp objects have been removed from the house, neighborhood, universe, etc.
My theory for the lack of this fear in women can be summed up in two words: annual exam. The annual exam teaches women that you’d have to try really hard to injure yourself in this area.
For those of you that don’t know (read: men), I’ll explain what a woman goes through when she has her womanly exam. First, you have to sit in a doctor’s office waiting room for approximately four hours or until the office staff is done with lunch, their golf game, rewriting the Bible or whatever it it they do behind that little glass partition they make you talk through. To pass the time, they give you reading choices like “The Cheese Connoisseurs Guide to Limberger – Special Edition”, “Wedding Gowns from Recycled Materials – From Trash to Treasured Memory”, and “How to Ice Fish in Your Own Freezer”. All magazines are at least three years old and mysteriously have the conclusion of every article missing (another plot of the office staff).
When you finally get called into the exam room, you are told by a nurse to take off everything ebut your socks and put on a paper gown. There are several points to be made here. One is that, soon, you are going to be laying on a table, in a cold room, with a spotlight on your crotch and, somehow, the thought that you get to leave your socks on is supposed to be reassuring. The second point is that it is not a paper gown, it’s a really big paper napkin. I’m sure it says somewhere on the package that these things come from “one size fits all”. Sure, as long as you are no taller than 4’9″ and weigh no more than 87 pounds. Of course, I have my socks on, I’m wearing my big napkin, I’m waiting for someone to come in and look at my crotch, but, damnit, I still have my dignity.
Meanwhile you wait for several more hours while the office staff watches you on hidden cameras.They laugh at you as you try to remain calm while confined to a small space with only a paper towel as protection from the increasingly colder room. Finally the doctor comes in, smiles and gives you the usual banal greeting: “And how are we today?” Perhaps it’s an experiment to see if paper “gowns” and socks and cold temperatures will make you develop multiple personalities. They’re just waiting to see how long it take before one person goes into the exam room, but when that neutral question is asked, ten personalities scream out their responses.
Next, you lay down on a vinyl covered exam table (think of car seats in July, because, strangely the temperature is now rising) and are asked to put your sock-clad feet in the stirrups.
Stirrips? You didn’t know they housed thoroughbreds here. No, Mr. Ed is not your doctor. Stirrips are where you put your feet to hold your legs up and out of the way while you’re being examined. (You have to wonder if the people that designed these also thought up high heeled shoes and corsets.)
Then the doctor pulls the exam light over. It looks like a giant goose-necked reading lamp, but when it is turned on, you begin to think they’re trying to flag down passing spacecraft instead.
Just when you’re thinking, “How much worse can this get?,” the doctor starts inserting things in your privates with the help of what could be either tapioca pudding or motor oil (you can’t get a good look from your vantage point). Picks and q-tips and spatulas and golf clubs and maybe the keys to his Volvo. Then in the distance you hear the phone ring and the doctor says, “I’m sorry. I really have to take this call.”
What can you do? You just have to lay there under the big napkin, with what feels like the Jaws of Life beginning to feel a bit cold on your delicate tissure. You feel a sneeze coming on (the temperature is dropping again) and you hold it for fear that you will either accidentally shoot something out or it will disapper inside, prompting a search party.
Finally, it’s over. You can put your clothes, shoes and coat back on (is it getting warmer in here now?) and then you go to the little window to pay. That is the most incomprehensible and humiliating part. You have had to suffer more indignities and temperature fluctuations than any man will ever have to and then they make you pay. (This must be how they fund their evil experiments.)
The whole experience make it hard to understand all of men’s crying and flinching and protecting of the area of the body that all women know is not really all that delicate or in need of protection. (Women don’t need to wear cups, do they?) This further enforces my theory that women are tougher and stronger than men.
I do need to go back to the doctor, though. I think he left his 9 iron in there.
