Tip It! (9 page)

W
hen Joyce was born, she was the only girl on Johnny’s side of the family for a long time—all boys among the grandkids, I tell ya—so she got a lot of favored treatment. You’d have thought she was a princess, the way she was doted on, and I’m not saying little Joyce didn’t enjoy it. Who wouldn’t?

But she didn’t let that define who she was. Joyce really got into books and reading, and since we had a library right down the street from our house, smart little Joyce made a habit of going there a lot. She’d help the librarians out with tasks, and they all fell in love with her. So much so that when the library held one of their coffee-and-cookies programs for the trustees, the head librarian asked little Joyce if she’d like to give a presentation on a book she’d read.

Well, Joyce and I prepared for that for so long, we must have looked insane. But I worked with her until Joyce had her essay down perfect. We got her a darling new dress and shoes, and we fixed her hair so she’d look completely adorable. I couldn’t wait to bask in my daughter’s triumph.

My daughter Joyce getting a bath in the sink. How cute!

You can probably see where this is going.

Joyce got up in front of the ladies, looking as cute as can be, and when they said, “Okay, Joyce, you can start,” she started shifting. Then she starts getting busy with her hands. She’s looking around.

“Joyce, get going,” I’m thinking.

She starts talking, and out comes nothing that resembles what we’d worked on. She’s ad-libbing like crazy, looking at everybody and smiling like she knows what she’s saying, but it was obvious to everybody what had happened. The group was really sweet about it, but I kept thinking, “I’m gonna kill her when I get home!”

Maybe this story is more about me and my reaction than my daughter. Sorry, Joyce!

The thing to remember, though, is that while I probably got a little too mad that day, I can laugh about it now. Everybody gets stage fright, and she’d never spoken in front of people before. Besides, I couldn’t have been prouder of the fact that Joyce learned how to get over her stage fright, because she went on to become a wonderful teacher. I mean, you
have
to be able to take charge of a room in that job!

B
oy, is it time for a woman to be president. [
Amen, sister! Preach! Oh shit, I hope she’s not talking about Sarah Palin.
]

Guys are so nuts (all this fooling around they do when they’re in office) that it’s time to give a woman a chance. I just don’t think a girl would be so crazy if she were in that job. If Hillary Clinton had gotten on the ticket in 2008, I would have voted for her. [
Whew.
] She’s tough, and she’s obviously very, very smart, and I think you need somebody who’s both to be president. I love her. [
Just to clarify, my mom did vote for Obama, and yes I got her a little tipsy before driving her to the polling place.
]

Kathy likes to call me an “early feminist” because of my belief in the power of women. Also, I guess, because I had the kind of marriage in which we shared duties across the board. Johnny helped change diapers; I handled the money. [
That sounds like a disparity in the distribution of power, Mom, but good for you.
] And when I took a job because we needed extra money, Johnny helped pick up the slack when it came to household chores like getting dinners ready and putting kids to bed. I spoke up when I needed help, and because I married a great guy, I got it. But on top of that, my daughters never heard from me that a woman couldn’t do anything she set her mind to. I’m all for women climbing that ladder as far as they want to go. I mean, my editor on this book is a woman! And her boss is a woman! That’s great. Kathy’s a boss, too, to that lovely Tom and Tiffany. Hopefully Tiffany will be a boss someday! [
Hopefully Tiffany will be changing my diapers someday. And Mom calling Tom “lovely” just never gets old
.]

You could say we’ve come a long way since the days when my dad could forbid his girls from being “unladylike” in his house. [
Her dad had sixteen children. As if that wonderful old mick could even keep track
.] Once, when I was living in that apartment with Irene (we were both married with kids and our husbands were in the service then), I had to run over to my dad’s store—not very far away—to get something for the baby. It was a hot summer day, and I had a little shirt and shorts on, and I scuttled through the alley so nobody would see me.

I go in, and my dad says, “What are you doing walking around like that?”

Immediately I became a kid again. “Dad!”

We needed stuff for the kids, but I tried to make it sound as tragic and dire as possible to excuse myself. “I had to get milk, Dad!” Here I was, a grown woman, married, a mother, and I felt ten years old all over again.

“You’re not leaving this store and this house with those on,” he said, referring to my shorts, which probably went past my knees, considering the era.

“Oh, all right,” I said. Dad would naturally throw in a few extra items for us whenever I bought something from his store because he was a very kind man, but he had old-fashioned ideas about women, so I still had to trudge back wearing one of my mother’s aprons, because what I had on wasn’t what a mother wore even to run a quick errand. God forbid! I was able to laugh about it as I made my way back to Irene—back through the alley, of course—looking more appropriate in my father’s eyes for a married woman. [
Next up for the coalition forces (after they rout those sexist Taliban): 1930s Chicago.
]

“Oh good,” Irene said when I got back and told her what happened. “I’m so glad you went instead of me!” [
Irene, snap!
]

Now, do I think girls who get married should go out to a dance club with their girlfriends? No. Movies, dinner together, sure. But what are you going dancing for if you’re married? Guys are going to ask you to dance, and what are you going to do then? [
Throw your drink in their face, that’s what. The nerve. And in a dance club!
] You’ve got a husband at home. Be smart. [Real Housewives of Orange County,
meet Maggie, the hottest housewife ever!
]

Also, I’m not so nutsy a feminist that a guy complimenting me at work on how I look puts me in a lather. [
Not a leather?
] When you’re young and pretty, a guy might say, “Hey, babe, you know you look pretty sexy in that dress!” I don’t think that’s so bad. [
Unless you’d prefer to abide by Title VII of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act.
] When it’s done respectfully. I was the hot new babe at Form Fit Bra Factory when I started working there after high school, and I tell ya, that attention felt pretty good. Now you hear, “Oh! I want to sue for a million dollars!” Geez. [
Uh-oh. I hope Levi Johnston can’t read this.
]

But don’t get me wrong. A guy who wants to get all scrungy about it, and pinch you maybe, or get really graphic, then you go up and slap him. [
Unless you’d prefer to abide by the country’s assault and battery laws.
] Don’t take any of that nonsense. I don’t go for that crap. One time I didn’t even have to slap the guy. I was working in a doctor’s office, and there was an optometrist whose big thing was to head straight to my desk and tell me dirty jokes. I was married and with a couple kids. I don’t know what that louse thought he was getting away with.

Well, I never laughed. Underneath, I’d do all my hating. “Hey scumbag,” I’d say in my mind. But outwardly, I’d say “Oh gosh!” and then turn back to what I was doing. Or not say anything and just keep working. Then one day this optometrist came over, started one of his kneeslappers, and stopped himself. [
This guy sounds like such an asshole.
]

“You know, I think I’m wasting my time here,” he said. “Margaret never seems to appreciate my jokes.” [
Never mind. I’m totally on his side now.
]

“Doctor, I have a lot of work to do, and I just don’t have time for it,” I said.

He never came up to me again. I showed my displeasure without yelling or screaming. I just gave him the cold shoulder, and wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of the tiniest laugh. That did it. [
Maybe I’m missing the lesson here, but she could have at least gotten a free eye exam.
]

Look, I’m very much a feminist when it comes to women not taking any abuse from men. Ever. I always say, a husband might hit me once. But twice, never, because either I’d kill him or he’d be in jail for the rest of his life. I want all women to respect themselves, get as good an education as they can, and not stand for any mistreatment from friends, bosses, and men in general. Don’t settle, ladies!

That means I’ve also long believed in equal pay for men and women. [
Whoa, is that the sound of your boyfriend Bill O’Reilly breaking up with you?
] My view on that came about when I worked part-time at the hospital. We had a fella who quit his job, and to replace him they picked this girl who had worked with him, because she was really excellent. She was next in line for it, and it was smart of the hospital to give the job to her. Then I found out she was being paid almost $4,000 less than he was making. How could you not think that wasn’t fair?

But in my day, the man was the breadwinner, and when women worked, it was for “fun.” [
Or to be sexually harassed a teeny bit
.] Or it was for a specific need. I mean, I went to work because Johnny and I realized tuition fees for the kids’ high school were looming [
here we go
], and we wanted our kids to go to Catholic high school. [
Yeah, that one really “took.”
] I knew one woman who worked to pay for a daughter’s wedding. And I remember another woman telling me she was working because her family needed a new refrigerator. But four years later, she was still working. You have to think, maybe after that refrigerator was paid for, she liked the satisfaction of having a good job and doing it well, even if it meant rearranging her home life. [
Or she wanted to buy refrigerators for the whole block.
]

I asked my colleague who wasn’t making as much as her male predecessor why she didn’t say something about the pay fairness. “Oh, I don’t want to say anything,” she said. “I’m delighted I have this good job.” [
As I expect my staff—or as I call them, laborers—to say.
]

But nowadays, women are often the breadwinners, because they’re maybe divorced with a kid and got screwed by a guy who isn’t paying his share. Single moms have to work, and they’re fighting for equal pay.

I will say that I don’t think a woman should have to be too strong or too tough to succeed. I don’t like the idea that women have to act like men to get their way. [
Fine. I’ll tuck my penis under for this part of the chapter.
] I think you can be a woman and be strong and be respected but still be compassionate and feeling, and not have to prove yourself as being tough like a man. If you’re smart, your smarts will usually come out on their own. Look at Eleanor Roosevelt, a first lady I just loved. She used to write a column for newspapers and magazines; I was in my teens when it started running, and I always read it. She was so smart, and wrote about important topics of the day, things affecting everyday people and families, but also subjects empowering to women, like discrimination and the Equal Rights Amendment, which I’m in favor of. Eleanor was a woman who wasn’t about spending money on clothes, or simply looking proper as the wife of the president. A lot of times, who I like in a president has a lot to do with who they’re married to. [
That’s why Sarah Palin has such a following. It’s a-a-a-ll about Todd
.]

I wasn’t so crazy about the man-hating that went on when the women’s movement got big, though. Maybe that’s because I married a great guy. Irene and Rae did, too. My brothers were great guys. Sure, there were scuzzy guys around the neighborhood, but you just didn’t pay attention to them.

And don’t get me started on the bra burners. What was that supposed to mean? We all need a bra at some point. It was probably the eighteen-year-olds who were doing that, because they didn’t need them. The rest of us? We needed them. And that bra-burning idea was right up the guys’ alley, wasn’t it? Guys loved that.

Push Up Your Fofties

KATHY:
Wait a second, Mom. I just want to get out there that the bra-burning thing was kind of a myth.

MAGGIE:
Good. Because it sounded stupid.

K:
But can we divulge one of the real reasons you loved a good bra?

M:
What do you mean?

K:
Your getting-out-of-a-ticket method?

M:
Oh. Right.

K:
What would you tell me about how to make that nice police officer dismiss my speeding ticket?

M:
Well, you say, in a real sweet voice, “Oh Officer, I’m really sorry.” You never argue with a cop. Never.

K:
It’s kind of like being raped. Just do what they say and wait till it’s over.

M:
No, no! Kathleen! You act all innocent, say you’re sorry, and then, you know, you give them a reason to maybe forget about the ticket.

K:
And that reason is . . . I wish I had a drum roll.

M:
You push up your fofties.

K:
“Fofties”! Boobs, Mom. I don’t know where you got “fofties.”

M:
You just kind of lean back a little, push ’em up, bat your eyelashes, and say, “Oh Officer, I’m just so sorry. I was very upset.”

K:
“My giant boobs fell on the steering wheel and caused me to make that wrong turn.”

M:
That’s right.

K:
Did this ever actually work?

M:
Well, a few times Dad and I were driving somewhere . . .

K:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. How does that method work when Dad’s in the car?

M:
Well, in that case, he sees two older people . . .

K:
Pushing up their fofties. Dad had fofties by then. Quite a pair, too.

M:
My fofties had kind of gone by that point.

K:
Also, how does this work if it’s a lady officer? They have them, you know.

M:
“You’ve got beautiful eyelashes” maybe?

K:
Yeah, that’s gonna knock down the price of that ticket real fast.

M:
Look, you’re never getting that ticket torn up if it’s a woman cop.

K:
Not even if it’s a lesbian?

M:
I doubt it. Don’t you think they’d be into following the law?

Look, men can sometimes be so nuts about sex. A guy’ll have a wonderful wife, everything you’d ever want, money to burn, be at the top of his profession, and then go and do something stupid. It happens so often with men, you have to wonder what it’s all about. I just don’t think women would pull that kind of goofy stuff so often. Of course, every time I read about a woman screwing up, I can’t help but think, “She’s screwing it up for all women!” Because certainly with men, when they make mistakes—especially of the fooling around on the side kind—you sense there’s a lot of nudging elbows and smiles among other men. It’s why I’ve been known to say, “Men are such pigs!” and then get razzed about saying that by my own kids. “Ma says men are all pigs!” I don’t really think that. [
Wait, what?
]

But if you’re a young girl and you get PG [
that’s pregnant, youngsters, not the movie rating
], you know that guy will be out of sight so fast, you’re going to be the one suffering. And that’s the truth. [
Clearly Mom hasn’t missed one episode of MTV’s monster hit
16 and Pregnant.]

If You Never Have Sex, You Never Get Pregnant

KATHY:
Okay, Mom, hold on. I think everyone should know about your birds and bees talk with me.

MAGGIE:
Oh dear, that must have been choice.

K:
Do you remember? I had a worksheet and the assignment was, I was supposed to have a discussion with my parents.

M:
Oh God . . .

K:
You were supposed to talk to me about the birds and the bees, and there was stuff you were supposed to fill in on the worksheet. She was a progressive teacher, which I thought was great. My one hippie teacher.