This is our fourth and final story in our little "The B You Never Knew" side series. I hope you have enjoyed reading these. I have enjoyed re-reading and posting them for you. I have resisted the temptation to edit these (other than changing the names to protect the innocent) as I wanted to share them just as they had been shared before. This last story may be my favorite of the bunch - although I do like the light bulb and Oreo cookie jar stories a whole lot, too! But in many ways this story typifies B, and her uncanny ability to cut through all the fluff and sum a situation up in one line...
Boys Have It Easy
B was about 10
years old at the time. I don’t recall
what prompted the subject, but I remember that the three of us were in the
dining room around the computer. It was
one of those unexpected teachable moments that happen all the time if we are
attentive to them. Thankfully S was
there to help me with this one.
As I said, I
don’t remember how we got onto the subject, but we were there. Talking about the changes that B would be
experiencing as she became a teenager and a young woman. (Why do I suddenly have flashbacks of 6th
grade health class?) Anyway there is one
change that girls have experienced since Eve that when you first think about as
a new concept, it seems incredulous that it could really work this way. Without being too graphic we were describing
to B something that normally happens on a cyclical, regular, monthly
basis.
The look on
her face was priceless. This was clearly
all new information to her, and why anyone would design the plumbing to
function this way was beyond her imagination to grasp.
After a
moment of pause, she turns to S and asks, “You do this?”
S just
smiled and shook her head yes.
Then B turns
to me and asks, “And you do this?”
“Yes, going
on about 30 years, if truth be told,” I replied.
“Ok, I’m
gonna what again?” she queries for confirmation.
We reassure
her that this is how it all works.
She has
heard enough. She stands there a few
moments longer, looks from one to the other with this same look of astonishment
and disbelief, hoping against hope that we will tell her we were just
joking. But alas, we don’t back off from
our story.
Finally with
pure and innocent disgust and a sigh of resignation that some things are beyond
her ability to comprehend, she walks away with a simple summation based on a
10-year old‘s wisdom….
“BOYS HAVE
IT EASY.”
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