The Breakfast Table

Warrior Princesses

Dear AB,

I’m not so sure about the nation of womanhood idea. Men go to war because many of them like it, at least initially (the Vikings, for one, adored it, couldn’t wait to bleed and draw blood, and didn’t apparently in the least mind dying in battle if it was heroically). I would have been fooled for quite some time if it were somehow proved that women weren’t having a great time when they have their catfights. I admit myself to sometimes stirring up a little something with my spouse, when the going is a little dull. Or at least, I do believe that, as the Good Book says, there is a time for fighting.   

Watching my 13-year-old daughter and her friends fight and make up and fight and make up, ad infinitum, and having been in a tiny circle of womanhood down at my local library, being a board member, where through the years there has always been discontent and a certain amount of back-stabbing and as much gossip as a person wanted, makes me leery of a nation of Esthers having peace and prosperity. Also, although I’m all for women, I would miss a nation without men, not because they can reach the light bulbs to change them without getting a stool, but for the occasional wry, astute comment, the subtle zinger that comes from the quiet guy in the back, the one who has been listening and observing in that particularly quiet and smart male sort of way. Who says just the thing.

Snow-mobiling, in my book, does not count.  Skeet shooting, OK.

Oh yes, that young Englishman. He can come to the Nation of Women’s cocktail hour. I’ll see you there–I’ll look for the flash of the green cloak through the crowd.

In the meantime:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this–and all is mended–
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear. Etcetera.

Love,
jh