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The rich man’s grocery store also had something I’ve never
seen in a public place. A deluxe family bathroom with a urinal, regular toilet
and a child sized toilet. With over twelve years of experience under my belt of
seeking out family bathrooms for my wheelchair bound husband, I had never seen
a child’s toilet in one---nor a urinal now that I think about it. I would have
taken a picture but I thought I might feel like a tourist from Kick’s Ville if
I did. The grocery store also had people who took their customers’ groceries
out and loaded them in their cars. That was a flash-back to a by-gone era when
they quit giving that service on my side of town and now I want to be rich. Is
it too late in life for that to happen short of winning the Reader’s Digest
Sweepstakes? All afternoon, I kept opening the front door hoping to see their
camera crew parked on the street and them unloading a giant check made out to
me. Life is so full of disappointments.
Wednesday I had an appointment to get my car’s 12,000
mile maintenance done where I learned that even with my hearing aids in the numbers
16 and 60 sound the same. In addition to the other stuff, I needed new
windshield wiper blades and I was begrudging the fact that they’d “gone up” so
much since I last bought a pair. Boy, did I feel silly when I told the cashier
she made a mistake and undercharged me for the blades from what the (female)
service manager told me they would cost. They had to call the service manager over where it was determined that my next service appointment should be at the hearing aid center.
The dealership where I take my car is in a small town
near-by and it has more than their fair share of female employees working in traditionally
male roles. And they’d hired a new one since my last visit---a certified
mechanic so tiny she could have crawled in with the engine of my car, closed
the hood and still have room left over to do pushups inside. A slight stretch
of the truth, but you get the idea. She was petite like a Barbie Doll if Barbie
Dolls worked on pink plastic cars. The waiting room has windows allowing
customers to watch the mechanics at work and it crossed my mind that if their
new mechanic wore a pair of Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders’ shorts to go with her
bouncy ponytail they could triple their business. (Hey, I wish I had thought to
write that on a comment card.) Okay, that’s a sexist thing to say about her
wearing shorts and not including the guy mechanics in on the new dress code
suggestion but I’m old and I can be forgiven for poking fun.
In all seriousness, though, Betty Friedan would have been
proud if she were alive and had been my side-kick at my Chevy dealership. And so am I. All that work we ladies of the Feminist Movement did in the `60s
paid off for the current crop of young ladies. Girls get to be anything they
want to be and as soon as my peer age group dies off there will be no one
left to think it isn’t perfectly normal to have women (and men) let their talents and desire take them wherever and not be pigeon-holed by gender. Now, if we’d just break that glass ceiling in the White
House before I die….. ©
