"I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman"
- Helen Reddy

"I am woman hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore."
- Helen Reddy

"Men... women... It'll never work"
- Gloria Steinem

February 12th, 2003

I almost put this in the Jokes Section when I realized it was a great rant.

Hope, a co-worker of my wife's (with some help from my wife) sent this in. Oh! the joys of womanhood! It's something I'll never, ever know.

Here's an insiders look. Approach with caution.

We start to "bud" in our blouses at 9 or 10 years old only to find anything that comes in contact with those tender, blooming buds hurts so bad it brings us to tears. Enter the almighty, uncomfortable training bra contraption the boys in school will snap until we have calluses on our backs

Next, we get our periods in our early to mid-teens (or sooner). Along with those budding boobs, we now bloat, we cramp, we get the hormone crankies, have to wear little mattresses between our legs or insert tubular, packed cotton rods in places we didn't even know we had.

Our next little rite of passage (premarital or not) is having sex for the first time which is about as much fun as having a ramrod push your uterus through your nostrils (IF he did it right and didn't end up with his little cart before his horse), leaving us to wonder what all the fuss was about.

Then it's off to Motherhood where we learn to live on dry crackers and water for a few months so we don't spend the entire day leaning over Brother John. Of course, amazing creatures that we are (and we are), we learn to live with the growing little angels inside us steadily kicking our innards night and day making us wonder if we're having Rosemary's Baby.

Our once flat bellies now look like we swallowed a watermelon whole and we pee our pants every time we sneeze.

When the big moment arrives, the dam in our blessed Nether Regions will invariably burst right in the middle of the shopping, and we'll waddle with our big cartoon feet moaning in pain all the way to the ER. Then it's huff and puff and beg to die while the obstetrician says, "Please stop screaming, Mrs. Hearmeroar. Calm down and push. Just one more (or 10) good push," warranting a strong, well-deserved impulse to punch the bastard (and hubby) square in the nose for making us cram a wiggling, mushroom-headed 10lb. bowling ball through a keyhole.

After that, it's time to raise those angels only to find that when all that cute" wears off, the beautiful little darlings morph into walking, jabbering, wet, gooey, snot-blowing, life-sucking little poop machines.

The teen years. Need I say more?

The kids are almost grown now and we women hit our voracious sexual prime in our mid-30's to early 40's while hubby had his somewhere around his 18th birthday (which just happens to be the reason all that early hot man sex got you pregnant in the first place).

Now we hit the grand finale: "The Menopause," the grandmother of all womanhood.

It's either take the HRT (hormones) and chance cancer in those now seasoned "buds" or the aforementioned Nether Regions, or, sweat like a hog in July, wash your sheets and pillowcases daily and bite the head off anything that moves.

Now, you ask WHY women seem to be more spiteful than men when men get off so easy INCLUDING the icing on life's cake: Being able to pee in the woods without soaking their socks.

Now I love being a woman but "Womanhood" would make the Great Ghandi a tad crabby.

Women are the "weaker sex"? Yeah right.

Bite me.