Never call me ‘lady’

Thanks to the emphasis on political correctness, guys aren’t supposed to call us ‘girls’ any more. "Women" frequently is too formal, and while I’ve always felt ‘girls’ was more a term of fondness or familiarity than a diminutive one, a lot of women apparently felt differently. That pretty much left the title "ladies," and while I know it’s generally used out of politeness, I can’t stand it. Not applied to me, anyway.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with being a lady. There are some spectacular ladies in this world, and I have been spectacularly lucky to meet more than just a few of them. They are intelligent, gracious, poised, immaculate women who know what to do in every situation.

I am not one of them.

I was raised in a dominantly male household in a dominantly male small town. I was 5 years old before a female my age moved into town. When we became friends, it was like learning about another world: a world of dolls and dress up and tea parties and Easy Bake ovens. I came from a planet that revolved around sword fights, snakes and fishing. On my planet, dolls and tea parties would get your, um… backside… kicked.

I learned to hike, bike, camp, swear, fight, lift weights, climb trees, play "war" and love all things mechanical with the best of the boys. When the scales of justice tipped out of balance (such as a wounded man failing to fall down after being "shot"), I was as apt as any of them to confront the offending party. Physically, if necessary. But it never seemed to fail that, in the course of retaliation for some wrong – perceived or actual – an adult would appear and proclaim, "That’s not very ladylike behavior."

That might as well have been Greek to me, but it stopped me dead in my tracks as I tried to wrap my brain around exactly what that meant. That statement, nor anything like it, ever was directed at the others in my "boys-will-be-boys" world. They weren’t subtle about their delight in this arrangement.

The resultant unsatisfied need for justice was only compounded by the rage at its not being sated. Those five words short-shrift girls’ abilities to argue, negotiate, compromise, play, fight or even stand on a level playing field with their male counterparts. In my particular situation, that was just about everyone else in my world.

In the subsequent decades since those early years, I’ve learned a few other tricks to level that playing field, but I still recoil at the word. These days, when someone says, "Good afternoon, ladies," I frequently respond, "Never call me a lady." Usually, it makes people laugh, but once in a while, like a couple of years ago at Graziano’s in Canastota, someone asks me what I prefer.
I looked at her for a moment and told her to call me *#@!*. Without missing a beat, she said, "So, what do you *#@!*@* want to drink?"

She got a ridiculously enormous tip.

I hold ladies in deep regard, but I’ll never be one of them… now more by choice than design. But, hey, if someone needs his, um… backside… kicked, I just might be your girl.

Reprinted courtesy Eagle Newspapers, Syracuse, New York.