Thankful For Over-Protective Men

I have always been protected by protective men and been resented for that.

I was obsessional about the quality of my homework, so when I was in prep school, I brought home (and back to school the next day) more books than anyone else.

My mother (of blessed memory) charged my brother Harry (of blessed memory) with the task of carrying my books to my homeroom.

This started when I was in the 8th grade, and stopped soon after when my mother got a phone call that it was “inappropriate.” Harry was very polite, spoke little to anyone, and certainly did not create anything that could have passed for a disturbance.

The guidance counselor who phoned my mother said only that this was a girls school and boys were not normally welcome visitors.

Nothing further from that conversation was ever reported to me. I was used to being treated by that school in ways I did not necessarily appreciate.

Two days a week (presently) I work in a program for the (previously) homeless severely mentally ill in a large city in California. My book-bag is now full not so much with books as with various notes and “helps” to get me through this job.

I walk with a cane now.

My husband brings the bag to the door of the facility in the morning — and, treasure that he is — kisses me good-bye. He picks me up (similarly) in the evening.

I think it was closer to morning hour when the facility manager (a computer nerd female law-enforcer-like humanoid) roisted the poor guy into confirming or denying he was a patient, and asking what he was doing around the facility. He managed to escape her surveillance by claiming, apparently quite convincingly, that he was Dr. Goldstein’s husband.

As they say in French, “The more things change, the more they are the same thing.