I’ve never felt like the hopeless girl before.
Today at the café, Karen and Laura Ruth discussed girly stuff that I’ve somehow avoided learning all my life.
When I was a kid I stubbornly fought against my girlyness. I denied I ever liked pink. I played with Barbies, but only if they were doing kung fu moves on Timothy’s Power Rangers. For years I would only ever wear a dress when it was absolutely demanded of me by Mommy.
But I was a lousy tomboy. I couldn’t play sports to save my life. Creepy crawlies gave me the heebie jeebies and I have no upper body strength. Sad to say but I couldn’t do a pull up if my life depended on it and heaven forbid I ever need to hop a fence.
What I was good at was straddling the two gender roles. I was pretty handy with tools and could help out in the yard. Yet I was also good at helping pick out colors and swooning over David Duchovney (why won’t you love me?). And I kick ass at video games.
But today, in Ukraine, I realize that being tomgirlish is kind of hard. What the hell do I do with a fallen hem? How do I fix my seam? Darn my tights? Throw a punch (actually, I can do that one in theory…)
Worst of all is how strict the gender roles here are. Today at the café, some guy old enough to be my father, butted in on my table, sat himself down and tried to chat me up. Or at least I think he did. All the “ya ne punymayu’s” in the world wouldn’t shake this guy and I eventually abandoned the table to him and “niet spasseba’ed” my way out of eating the pie he tried to buy me for the safety of a table of Americans with the all important American Male. Every group of girls needs at least one. Apparently if there’s a guy looking out for us it’s supposed to repel Ukrainian men. Lord knows why, I had only met the guy this morning. But it seemed to do the trick and the old dude left me alone. Three things I learned from this morning:
- Being an ugly American does not make you invisible.
- Don’t SMILE at anyone.
- Don’t accept things from strangers
- Some people just don’t care that you’re clearly doing something else and that you clearly have not had a shower. Anytime’s a good time to chat up strangers.
