If Men Ruled the World

I have a husband, a son, and a stepson. Even our dog is a boy (though, thankfully, he’s of the no-nads variety).

Now, I could quite easily end this blog here and now, and I’d put money on it that a fair number of you would know exactly what I was talking about and could fill in the blanks all by yourself.

But since this is my 15 seconds of fame, I’ll carry on, shall I ladies? (And any man brave enough to venture forth from here, please note: you have been warned!)

If any of the abovementioned male creatures gets sick, the whole world as we know it comes to a screeching halt. The moon stops orbiting the earth, the sun falls from the sky, and human life ceases to be. Or it may as well.

All because a male is ill.

If, on the other hand, the females of the household get sick … life just goes on as before.

See, God created mankind in His image. And even God had to take a day off.

Whereas the female of the species just keeps ticking along, day after day, doing all the things that fall into the category of “women’s work” with the occasional ribbing from her mate (get it? Ribbing! Sorry, I couldn’t resist).

As we know from basic biology, it takes two Xs to make a woman, which in my opinion gives us a double dose of the stronger stuff, or twice as much tolerance when it comes to pain.

It is sad but true that if men had the babies, the world population would be much lower than it is today (and here’s where a man jumps in and says that wouldn’t be altogether a bad thing), if men went through pregnancy and labour, there would be medals made to hand out specifically to honour that achievement, and if men had to put up with PMS and the like roughly every 4 weeks, we would see the annual sick-day quota shoot up by at least an extra 12, and there would miraculously appear on the pharmacy shelves a painkiller to beat them all, at a very reasonable price too, I might add!

Yes, while it is true that man does traditionally carry the woman over the threshold on their wedding night, when it comes to the pain threshold, the typical male is reduced to a crawl.

Take my Beloved, for example, he recently recovered from a cold.

A cold.

He used up every tissue that Kleenex has managed to manufacture this past month, damn near drained the dam of its water supply, washing down enough paracetamol to put the local junkies to shame, and spent the better part of a week in bed (he did drag himself to work, God love him, purely because we need the money).

Just to balance out our particular equation, there’s me. I have suffered from endometriosis and polycystic ovaries since puberty kicked in. Most months I have trouble standing upright due to the agony in my uterus. I am usually anaemic, so throw in some good old-fashioned fatigue there. And I am one of those lucky lucky ladies that enjoys this wondrous event for a full 7 days each cycle. Yay me.

Do I get to wallow in my misery in the comfort and privacy of my bedroom?

Do I get to snuggle with a hot water bottle and a decent dose of anti-inflammatories?

Do I get to hit the pause button on the daily play-by-play of family life- the cooking, cleaning up, and chasing after kids?

Do I look like a man to you?

Oh no, with so much masculinity in our midst, I must just keep going.

And woe is the woman who happens to mention it’s “that time of the month”, because that only lays us open to a potential onslaught of PMS jokes thought up by someone who’s never experienced PMS, for obvious reasons.

So we suffer, but we do it in silence. And if the opposite sex shows some sympathy and offers a hot cup of tea, we do not throw it back in their face (however tempting that may be at times), we are gracious in our gender, and grateful in our manner.

And we curse the living dickens out of them over the internet instead.

Yes men may think they rule the world, but we know who keeps it turning don’t we?

Jx
©2009