Tread Lightly Around Yer Ladies, Boys

I believe that men and women should be treated equally (ie: equal pay for equal work, both should.. ahem... SHARE household chores, etc.) And unlike the Feminazis in the Women's Lib course I reluctantly took in grad school, I do not believe that women are ultimately better than men, or that we are exactly the same or better in any physical respect. (Because, duh, boys have penises and can usually bench press a little more than the average girl.) I do NOT believe that women are the weaker sex (who cleans up the mess when the dog -or kid- gets carsick? More often than not it's the female, while the male goes running away gagging.) But there is one itzy bitzy thing that occasionally makes women more vulnerable than men... uncontrollable hormonally induced emotional fluctuations. Yes, I'm talking about that time of the month.

I'm rather embarrassed to admit that the following scenario ever occured, but maybe it will help shed some light on the male/female diversity issue.

A couple days ago I got up early because I had to be somewhere, and while I was getting dressed, eating breakfast, and running around gathering my thoughts for the day, I turned on the TV. The remote was broken, so I left it on whatever station it was on the last time I watched TV. And so I was disappointed when the opening credits for a movie came on. Who watches movies in the morning? But since the remote was broken, I went on about my business, coming in and out of the den to catch snippets of the most utterly ridiculous premise for a movie I'd ever heard. It was called Fly Away Home, about a gaggle of baby geese that get orphaned somewhere up north, and Jeff Daniels and Dana Delaney decide its their duty to build an ultralite plane shaped like a goose for their teen daughter to fly in hopes that the baby geese will follow it south for the winter.

Utterly.

Ridiculous.

So while I'm fighting back mild Hollywood induced nausea, I'm also reluctantly intrigued by multiple failed attempts to get the baby geese to follow the plane.

Right about the time I was all ready for the day, having collected my keys and things I needed to walk out the door, the geese followed the plane.

So I'm standing in the den in front of the TV, watching a 14 year old fly a goose-shaped ultralite, expecting a John Denver re-enactment at any moment. And it hits me. Uncontrollable hormonally induced emotional fluctuations. I started tearing up. And by the time the "mother goose" plane made its touchdown on an open field runway lined with anxious spectators, I was a basketcase (well, not really, but I was "touched".) Why? Hell if I know. And the thing is, I don't know if I was tearing up because it was a happy moment (the baby geese flew south!) or because it was a sad moment (the teen daughter had to leave her new friends.)

I'm convinced there were subliminal messages all throughout the movie to get people to watch it. It makes me feel better to think so.

I can watch war movies and newscasts with boodshed and violence and I feel nothing. I'm anaesthetized to it. But show me baby geese when I'm having PMS and I'll cry like a baby.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what makes women different (not better, not worse - just different) than men.