Kari

Age is everything, I think, in this discussion. Recall your first boyfriend back in middle school. Let me paint the picture, and see if it resonates with you: Kissing in a dark room, in a hallway, at the top of the slide...with a half-dozen people looking on, uncomfortably close and giving all-too-audible commentary on your technique.
"Gosh, it's been like two whole minutes."
"Seriously, guys, the bell's about to ring..."
Similarly, let me describe the phase that all freshmen attending school in NYC go through: at one point or another, you end up falling-down drunk in some club from free drinks given to you by some Gropey McGrope.

At a restaurant the other day, it came time to pay the bill. My brother, father, mother and I, after consuming a very nice meal, were making very innocuous, pleasant conversation. Then the waitress approached, handed the bill to my mother (hesitating slightly), and scooted off.

The conversation halted. We all blinked at one another, as my mother handed the bill across the table to my father.

“Well,” we all seemed to be thinking, “THIS has never happened.”

My mom and dad smiled, after a moment, and said something like, “Yes, well, why SHOULDN’T she hand it to a woman?” But their immediate reaction embarrassed them, I think. My mom had her own purse, why should she hand the bill to my dad?

My grandmother-- a pilot, small business owner, Appalachian Trail hiker, teacher and single mother—is, in her late seventies, quite familiar with modern inventions. After all, she's been dealing with cars and planes since her teenage years. She has a laptop and a cell phone, which she operates without the assistance of her offspring. And, my favorite proof that she's technically savvy, she has never used the term "newfangled" in her life.

Yet, when you ask her to name the most important invention of the twentieth century, she doesn't credit the a-bomb, the microwave, ipods or any other techno-gadget.

Sexism is a tricky thing. Sure, it's your brother getting a new car for his sixteenth birthday when all you got was a hug, but sexism creeps into your life in more subtle ways than that.

For example, my mom came to visit me mid-semester of sophomore year. I'd been writing papers and studying for exams, so I barely had time to clean my room before she arrived. In the thirty minutes that her cab made its slow, steady way towards my house, I desperately tried to trash liquor bottles that had piled up in the downstairs common areas. To give you a little background, I was living in a literary society house—kind of like a fraternity—where a bunch of old, curmudgeonly men had spent the best years of their old and curmudgeonly lives. The society became co-ed after a century or so, followed by the University.