Many years ago, I commuted into Boston for work.\u00a0 And because at the time there was no commuter rail from where I lived, I took a van in.\u00a0 We all paid a fee and some of us drove the van on occasion and on those days, we\u2019d get a day knocked off our fee for the next month.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll have to say that we had a very \u201cdiverse\u201d cast of characters.\u00a0 And I mean that by every definition of the word.\u00a0 Not only racially, ethnically, careerwise and socio-economically but also philosophically and by personality type.\u00a0 We were a motley crew.\u00a0 We even had a guy who worked for one of the intelligence agencies (or so he said). \u00a0There were a few people who couldn\u2019t stand each other and there were some very close friends.<\/p>\n
But even though most of us didn\u2019t know each other \u201cin the real world,\u201d for an hour in the morning and the afternoon we spent our time talking about the events of the day and the latest sit-com and our work day and our home lives and anything else to pass the time.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a funny thing but to the people on the van what we thought about the world was a pretty important part of our day.\u00a0 We would argue politics and social trends.\u00a0 And once in a while, the guys would even get together for a social gathering.\u00a0 \u00a0One time I had the boys over for a poker game and sandwiches.\u00a0 It was a great success, meaning no one lost too much and everyone ate too much and drank way too much beer.\u00a0 And this cemented the male camaraderie of the van immensely.\u00a0 Once you\u2019ve bluffed yourself to a pot with a broken straight it\u2019s almost like you\u2019re boyhood chums.<\/p>\n
There was a feminist contingent on the van too and they would provide a united front when explaining why men were the cause of all the problems in the world.\u00a0 That is until they needed help with a flat tire or an angry motorist on the road.\u00a0 I remember a time when I was riding shotgun while one of the most strident feminists was driving the van through Boston street-traffic.\u00a0 It was an awful ride.\u00a0 We were in a bumper-to-bumper jam and she had lost all patience and was laying on the horn every other minute or so.\u00a0 Finally, the guy in front of us in a brand-new sports car, throws his car into park, jumps out of his car.\u00a0 He\u2019s about six foot five and comes running over and bangs on her window with his fist.<\/p>\n
Well, this champion of female equality, jumped out of the driver\u2019s seat and ran to the back of the van like a shot.\u00a0 Which I found hilarious.\u00a0 Until I realized she had left the van in gear.\u00a0 So of course we rolled into the back of the sports car.\u00a0 Now I had to climb over the hump and get into the driver\u2019s seat.\u00a0 The engine had stalled out and I had to nurse it back to life and then throw it into reverse to separate us from the sports car.\u00a0 All the while the irate driver is hopping up and down screaming over us hitting his car.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t think of anything else to say so I shrugged my shoulder and pointed out to him that traffic was moving and tried not to laugh.\u00a0 After he convinced himself that his bumper wasn\u2019t much the worse for the bump and realized that if he wanted to make an accident report of it, he\u2019d have to tell a traffic cop that he had been threatening a woman driver for being a woman driver he slunk back to his car and we proceeded.<\/p>\n
But that little demonstration had us laughing at the sisterhood for a good long time about having a concrete answer as to, \u201cWhat good are men?\u201d\u00a0 But pretty soon the sisterhood had convinced themselves again that women were the only intelligent life in the universe.<\/p>\n
There was another occasion when the gals were plotting their takeover of the world.\u00a0 And they had managed to set off one of the less easy-going guys with their claim that a pack of five women could kill any man in a fight.\u00a0 They badgered him for a good long time and they could see this talk got under his skin so they did it all the more.\u00a0 They demanded that he tell them how he could possibly hope to fight against five opponents.\u00a0 After all, they said, if all of them constantly pummeled him from all sides they\u2019d eventually injure him enough to overwhelm him.<\/p>\n
So finally, he said, the tactic he would use would be to get a strong hold on one woman and bash her head into the ground and then do the same to each of them consecutively.\u00a0 He believed this would have a twofold advantage.\u00a0 Firstly, finishing off one opponent completely would significantly improve his position in the fight.\u00a0 But more importantly, he believed that psychologically women would be unlikely to continue attacking a man that had just bashed a woman\u2019s head in.<\/p>\n
His logic seemed to have been persuasive.\u00a0 The gals gave up that thought experiment completely and the rest of the ride was very quiet.\u00a0 After that they didn\u2019t bother him about the war of the sexes, so to speak.\u00a0 I think they were kind of scared of him.\u00a0 What he said must have struck them as accurate.<\/p>\n
But by the next day we had some new thing to argue about.\u00a0 I think it was the Oscars.\u00a0 The girls had a very long talk about that with very little help from us.\u00a0 But at least things were back to normal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many years ago, I commuted into Boston for work.\u00a0 And because at the time there was no commuter rail from where I lived, I took<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3366,818,1263],"tags":[3341,1267],"class_list":["post-28788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-life-in-dunwich","category-ocf","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","tag-dunwich","tag-photogs-corner"],"yoast_head":"\n