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February 21, 2020
Effectively Elena
East To West
By Elena Tucker
Special to the Prophet
While I was out walking this morning it came to me suddenly that if I could find a way to perpetually walk from East to West, I could increase productivity because I’d be striding against the earth’s rotation. In other words, I could make the laws of physics work in my favor; the sheer mass of the world moving under my feet will heighten my productivity.
This is an important thing to ponder, because I’ve felt the stakes upped of late. I’m trying to attain a certain social something that I fear is out of my reach. And the question is, can I walk further, faster somehow? Can I make this thing work in my favor?
The problem is that some of us, no matter how hard we try, aren’t going to have perfectly appointed homes. Or sleek, shining, well-behaved hair. Or masses of clever, elegant decorations on our porches and dining tables. It’s not so much about money or time…I think it’s something congenital. Thus, I suspect that never, should I live to have blue hair, will I learn to make gorgeous hors d’oeuvres and gourmet pizzas. It’s just not in me.
I know several super-achieving women. Who could say what unfair genetic combinations produced their gleaming straight teeth, shimmering hair, eye for aesthetic detail, and the absolute disgusting ability to hang a pair of French doors where an old screen once wobbled? Not simply hang the doors, mind, but finish off the job with exquisitely designed molding…after a hard day of child-care while simultaneously painting tile for the kitchen floor and preparing a dazzling buffet for the next day’s party.
I used to think this was a singular woman, but I’m running into more and more of her ilk. And while I’m dazzled by the mythical proportions of their perfection, I can’t be sure that any sort of advantage is going to help me catch up to them.
There are those who give parties with baked confections braided from their own, home-brewed sour dough while I sit on the bench that they whittled out in the barn, before hand-finishing with their own manufactured beeswax. They will effortlessly move around the kitchen, wonderfully, dressed while serving wines hinting of the back acre’s summer orchard. This woman never had a cavity. She never has dandruff or b.o. She never has a cake fall. She never yells at her kids. The cat never tosses a hairball on her carpet and her toilet never clogs. She stays up late baking superbly decorated cookies for the PTO fundraiser, then gets up and makes real waffles for breakfast. She’s charmed in some mystical way. That’s the one side of the coin. The other side is myself, and those like me, who forgot to look in the mirror before they leave the house, who are dressed in whatever kind of fleece it is that attracts dog hair. We have hangnails. We get pillow wrinkles on our cheeks. We manage pop-tarts before school. We sneeze mid-conversation and don’t have a tissue handy, and forget to clean our teeth after eating Oreos.
I’ve talked to some of my kind and I think an element of balance is in order before too many of us women start to feel desperately like underachievers.
So, while I take advantage of the earth’s momentum and try to feel like I’m getting someplace, could some of you ladies out there walk the other way? I mean, you can afford the handicap. Give me a break. You could try having ‘roots’ in your hair, for example, and old spaghetti sauce blackening in the microwave. You could develop ‘pink eye’, and some of you could even try for athlete’s foot, a bland casserole.
It would do you good.
It would help to stabilize things for the rest of us.
Meanwhile, I’m walking against the spin of the Earth.
I need all the help I can get.
This is an important thing to ponder, because I’ve felt the stakes upped of late. I’m trying to attain a certain social something that I fear is out of my reach. And the question is, can I walk further, faster somehow? Can I make this thing work in my favor?
The problem is that some of us, no matter how hard we try, aren’t going to have perfectly appointed homes. Or sleek, shining, well-behaved hair. Or masses of clever, elegant decorations on our porches and dining tables. It’s not so much about money or time…I think it’s something congenital. Thus, I suspect that never, should I live to have blue hair, will I learn to make gorgeous hors d’oeuvres and gourmet pizzas. It’s just not in me.
I know several super-achieving women. Who could say what unfair genetic combinations produced their gleaming straight teeth, shimmering hair, eye for aesthetic detail, and the absolute disgusting ability to hang a pair of French doors where an old screen once wobbled? Not simply hang the doors, mind, but finish off the job with exquisitely designed molding…after a hard day of child-care while simultaneously painting tile for the kitchen floor and preparing a dazzling buffet for the next day’s party.
I used to think this was a singular woman, but I’m running into more and more of her ilk. And while I’m dazzled by the mythical proportions of their perfection, I can’t be sure that any sort of advantage is going to help me catch up to them.
There are those who give parties with baked confections braided from their own, home-brewed sour dough while I sit on the bench that they whittled out in the barn, before hand-finishing with their own manufactured beeswax. They will effortlessly move around the kitchen, wonderfully, dressed while serving wines hinting of the back acre’s summer orchard. This woman never had a cavity. She never has dandruff or b.o. She never has a cake fall. She never yells at her kids. The cat never tosses a hairball on her carpet and her toilet never clogs. She stays up late baking superbly decorated cookies for the PTO fundraiser, then gets up and makes real waffles for breakfast. She’s charmed in some mystical way. That’s the one side of the coin. The other side is myself, and those like me, who forgot to look in the mirror before they leave the house, who are dressed in whatever kind of fleece it is that attracts dog hair. We have hangnails. We get pillow wrinkles on our cheeks. We manage pop-tarts before school. We sneeze mid-conversation and don’t have a tissue handy, and forget to clean our teeth after eating Oreos.
I’ve talked to some of my kind and I think an element of balance is in order before too many of us women start to feel desperately like underachievers.
So, while I take advantage of the earth’s momentum and try to feel like I’m getting someplace, could some of you ladies out there walk the other way? I mean, you can afford the handicap. Give me a break. You could try having ‘roots’ in your hair, for example, and old spaghetti sauce blackening in the microwave. You could develop ‘pink eye’, and some of you could even try for athlete’s foot, a bland casserole.
It would do you good.
It would help to stabilize things for the rest of us.
Meanwhile, I’m walking against the spin of the Earth.
I need all the help I can get.