A feminist colleague passed my office on her way to the copying machine and cast an angry scowl at me through the door for no reason I could fathom. PMS as an excuse for
anti-social behaviorOn her way back she snarled, "Do you know why men rule the Earth?"
"Because we're smart enough not to answer questions like that?" I offered.
"No, because you don't have menstrual periods. I dare you to write a column about that."
Then she stomped off. And I thought naked aggression was supposed to be a male trait.
Actually, I'm getting tired of women using pre-menstrual syndrome, a dubious "disease" that doesn't even deserve a scientific-sounding name to begin with, to excuse their anti-social behavior.
Men have to deal with unique problems relating to our anatomy, too.
Like shifting-hair syndrome, the condition where hair disappears from our heads and instead emerges from our ears, nostrils and other dreadful places. My wife is kind enough to shave my neck for me after I buzz my hair. The last time she grumbled, "It's getting hard to tell where the hair on your neck ends and the hair on your back starts." Ouch. And she wasn't even suffering from PMS.
Then there's lost-sock syndrome, the way half the socks men put into a clothes dryer disappear from the face of the Earth. Women know what happens to them but don't tell us so they can enjoy watching us go nuts trying to find the lost socks.
I finally figured it out in a fluke moment when I inadvertently paid attention to one of those stupid static cling TV commercials. The socks stick to the inside of our pants legs! We walk around with it chafing our most sensitive parts until it shakes loose and drops out the leg to the floor, where women rush to pick it up before we see what's going on and spend the rest of the day tittering at us.
We don't use these painful conditions as all-purpose excuses for every reprehensible thing we do. OK, we get a lot of mileage out of, "Men just have to have it once in awhile -- it's our nature." But not like women and PMS.
Man: "Was my failure to hang up the towel really sufficient cause for you to shriek the vilest curses at me, shred my shorts and donate my golf clubs to the Sanitation Department?"
Woman: "Sorry. PMS."
Man: "Why did you ask me to present your idea at the meeting and then make me look like a jackass by trashing me and the idea when I did it for you?"
Woman: "It's just PMS. Bygones."
I had dinner with my brother Rick and his family on a recent trip to Los Angeles. His daughter complained she didn't get any cake on her birthday and I was giving Rick a hard time. "What kind of father doesn't get his daughter a birthday cake?" I needled. I bought the kid a big piece of Chocolate Lava Supreme.
FINALLY, Rick's wife Juanita took pity on him. "It was PMS," Juanita whispered. "The girl locked herself in her room in one of those moods and there was nothing poor Rick could have done to get her to come out for her birthday cake."
I looked at Rick and his beautiful daughters Rebecca, Corryne and Patrice -- two already of raging-hormones age and one on the verge -- and suddenly I understood my brother's life in a whole new way. His ability to maintain his easy disposition was worthy of an even higher level of respect.
I'm sure glad my colleague didn't double-dare me to write a column about menstrual periods or I might have gotten myself in serious trouble.
David Shapiro is managing editor of the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at editor@starbulletin.com.
Volcanic Ash runs every Saturday in the Star-Bulletin.
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