Any guy with a lick of sense knows better than to tick off a pack of women. Any guy with half a lick of sense knows better than to tick off the same pack of women twice. I've always been a slow learner. Investment club
offers stock replyA few weeks ago, I wrote about the women's investment club my wife belongs to, which I misspelled Hui O Bye Bye to mock the defections from its ranks and the fact that the club has never actually bought any stock. I mentioned how the club's minutes discuss the fine lunches members eat as much as the stocks they don't buy.
I received a retort from one of the club's founders, Leslie Lang, that started, "I dare you to run this..."
My mother used to tell me, "Just because they dare you doesn't mean you have to do it." But I'm a slow learner.
"David Shapiro is lucky that we all have senses of humor," Lang wrote. "When the club met this month and read his column together over a sumptuous lunch, we laughed uproariously. One member nearly split a gut, choking on her chicken salad.
"Our club has a statement for David Shapiro: Listen here, Bucko, we've just now amassed enough cash to make a purchase, and learned enough about analyzing stocks to know we've found some good values. We're buying some stock now, you got that? And you know what else? Investment clubs usually don't invest money for the first year to year-and-a-half anyway."
Bucko?
"And yes," she said, "it's true that we eat really good food at our meetings. This month, members brought chicken salad with peanut sauce, homemade salmon-tofu salad with tomatoes and watercress, taro, tabouleh, and poppy seed cake. We suspect that Mr. Vegetarian is hungry and jealous."
Hey, belittling a man's vegetables is low.
"Just as valuable as the portfolio we are starting to build," she said, "are the humor, the friendships and the commitment to meet for a couple hours each month to learn together about planning for our futures."
Lang admitted that more than one member has said "bye bye" to the hui.
"We went through shaky times at first," she said. "Now we have a solid group of interesting, quality women. Our ranks include an artist and jeweler, a linguist, a musician, a writer and some airline employees who travel a lot. Some are self-employed, a couple are soon to retire, and one member is a Ph.D. candidate. We are in our 30s and 40s and 50s, some single and without children, some married and with grandchildren. We come together for our monthly meetings from our homes on two different Hawaiian islands. One of our members spends her summers on an island on a New Hampshire lake."
THIS must be their roundabout way of telling me to jump in a lake, preferably in the eastern part of the United States.
Lang said members voted to name their group "Hui Ho'owaiwai," which she said means a "club to increase wealth." And I thought it meant "The Chow Down Ladies."
"We hope, Bucko, that Maggie will hand you a little spending money now and again after you two retire," she said. "But we've asked her about it, and her answer seems to vary depending on what you've recently written about her. Maybe you'd better go find an investment club to join, too."
Yikes, maybe I'd better. But first, will somebody please tell me what's up with this "Bucko" stuff?
David Shapiro is managing editor of the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at editor@starbulletin.com.
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