Running and Raging

I am a woman. I've roared. I expect people to hear me. I come with groups of women in too many numbers to be ignored.

I also know that I should never be head of a major corporation or president of this company, because, and there are women who may cry "anti-feminist!" at me, I know my limits. No, I'm not talking intellect. I'm not talking ability. I'm not even talking about physical strength. No, my friends, I'm talking about hormones.

If I were in charge of the world, or even head of, say, a nice friendly company like Hallmark (ha!), there would be certain days each month when bad things would happen. When hormones run, unchecked, through my body, bad things happen. Customers get bad service (try though I might to be polite). Friends get an earful about my thoughts on the attrocities of life in general. My mother gets tearful (sometimes) conversations about the unfairness of my personal existence. WG ends up with me having some kind of an issue with him not paying me enough attention. In other words, I sort of become a spoiled brat.

In my few moments of clarity when my estrogen is racing through my veins, I understand why societies used to send women out of the village during "that time of the month," because, really, I shouldn't be allowed out to socialize or make decisions.

There would be nuclear war. Co-workers would be missing their eyeballs (because, honestly, I think that popping out the eyeballs of certain co-workers might result in them shutting up for a change). And you'd better believe that no slow, attitudinal, cashier at Target would get off without my telling them exactly where to head.

WG barely escaped with his life when he told me that he thought mood swings were mostly in women's heads, that we act on them during our periods, because society tells us what to expect. I maintained control but did inform him that he should try having estrogen pumped through his veins once a month and see what happens.

I asked, "What would happen if you suddenly had five times more testosterone in your body once a month?"

"Uh, I'd be more aggressive?"

"Exactly. Now you're starting to get it."

I let him live.

But only because he's such a good kisser.

The truth is that while our periods shouldn't prevent women from being in positions of power, some of us (myself included) might want to consider taking a day or two off at a certain time of the month and just getting the hell away politely removing ourselves from the things that most threaten our sanity...or, you know, everyone and everything.

p.s. my plaid-skirted avatar over there is my attempted ode to Harry Potter's Private School Chic (generally I'm against that whole Catholic-Schoolgirl-Uniform-Is-Sexy thing, but that could be because I wore such a uniform for 12 long years).