We started to "bud" in our blouses at 9 or 10 years old only to find
that anything that came in contact with those tender, blooming buds
hurt so bad it brought us to tears. So came the ridiculously
uncomfortable training bra contraption that the boys in school would
snap until we had calluses on our backs.
Next, we get our periods in our early to mid-teens (or sooner). Along
with those budding boobs, we bloated, we cramped, we got the hormone
crankies, had to wear little mattresses between our legs or insert
tubular, packed cotton rods in places we didn't even know we had.
Our next little rite of passage was having sex for the first time
which was about as much fun as having a ramrod push your uterus
through your nostrils (IF he did it right and didn't end up with his
little cart before his horse), leaving us to wonder what all the fuss
was about.
Then it was off to Motherhood where we learned to live on dry
crackers and water for a few months so we didn't spend the entire day
leaning over Brother John. Of course, amazing creatures that we are
(and we are), we learned to live with the growing little angels
inside us steadily kicking our innards night and day making us wonder
if we were preparing to have Rosemary's Baby.
Our once flat bellies looked like we swallowed a whole watermelon and
we pee'd our pants every time we sneezed. When the big moment
arrived, the dam in our blessed Nether Regions invariably burst right
in the middle of the mall and we had to waddle, with our big cartoon
feet, moaning in pain all the way to the ER.
Then it was huff and puff and beg to die while the OB says, "Please
stop screaming, Mrs. Hearmeroar Calm down and push. "Just one more
good push" (more like 10), warranting a strong, well-deserved impulse
to punch the
%$#*@*#!* hubby and doctor square in the nose for making us cram a
wiggling, mushroom-headed 10 pound bowling ball through a keyhole.
After that, it was time to raise those angels only to find that when
all that "cute" wears off, the beautiful little darlings morphed into
walking, jabbering, wet, gooey, snot-blowing, life-sucking little poop
machines.
Then come their "Teen Years." Need I say more?
When the kids are almost grown, we women hit our voracious sexual
prime in our early 40's - while hubby had his somewhere around his
18th birthday.
So we progress into the grand finale: "The Menopause," the
Grandmother of all womanhood. It's either take HRT and chance cancer
in those now seasoned "buds" or the aforementioned Nether Regions,
or, sweat like a hog in July, wash your sheets and pillowcases daily
and bite the head off anything that moves.
Now, you ask WHY women seem to be more spiteful than men, when men
get off so easy, INCLUDING the icing on life's cake: Being able to
pee in the woods without soaking their socks...
So, while I love being a woman, "Womanhood" would make the Great
Gandhi a tad crabby. You think women are the "weaker sex?" Yeah
right. Bite me.
