We started to "bud" in our blouses at 9 or 10 years old
only to find that anything that came in contact with
those tender, blooming buds hurt so bad it brought us to
tears. So came the ridiculously uncomfortable training
bra contraption that the boys in school would snap until
we had calluses on our backs.
Next, we get our periods in our early to mid-teens (or
sooner). Along with those budding boobs, we bloated, we
cramped, we got the hormone crankies, had to wear little
mattresses between our legs or insert tubular, packed
cotton rods in places we didn't even know we had.
Our next little rite of passage (premarital or not) was
having sex for the first time which was about as much
fun as having a ramrod push your uterus through your
nostrils (IF he did it right and didn't end up with his
little cart before his horse), leaving us to wonder what
all the fuss was about.
Then it' was off to Motherhood where we learned to live
on dry crackers and water for a few months so we didn't
spend the entire day leaning over Brother John. Of
course, amazing creatures that we are (and we are), we
learned to live with the growing little angels inside us
steadily kicking our innards night and day making us
wonder if we were preparing to have Rosemary's Baby.
Our once flat bellies looked like we swallowed a
watermelon whole and we pee'd our pants every time we
sneezed. When the big moment arrived, the dam in our
blessed Nether Regions invariably burst right in the
middle of the mall and we had to waddle, with our big
cartoon feet, moaning in pain all the way to the ER.
Then it was huff and puff and beg to die while the OB
says, "Please stop screaming, Mrs. Hearmeroar. Calm
down and push. Just one more good push (more like 10),"
warranting a strong, well-deserved impulse to punch the
%*#!* (and hubby) square in the nose for making us cram
a wiggling, mushroom-headed 10lb bowling ball through a
keyhole.
After that, it was time to raise those angels only to
find that when all that "cute" wears off, the beautiful
little darlings morphed into walking, jabbering, wet,
gooey, snot-blowing, life-sucking little poop machines.
Then come their "Teen Years." Need I say more?
When the kids are almost grown, we women hit our
voracious sexual prime in our early 40's - while hubby
had his somewhere around his 18th birthday.
So we progress into the grand finale: "The Menopause,"
the Grandmother of all womanhood. It's either take HRT
and chance cancer in those now seasoned "buds" or the
aforementioned Nether Regions, or, sweat like a hog in
July, wash your sheets and pillowcases daily and bite
the head off anything that moves.
Now, you ask WHY women seem to be more spiteful than
men, when men get off so easy, INCLUDING the icing on
life's cake: Being able to pee in the woods without
soaking their socks...
So, while I love being a woman, "Womanhood" would make
the Great Gandhi a tad crabby. Women are the "weaker
sex"? Yeah right. Bite me.
