March 09th, 2021

March is Women's History Month.


       Darlene McTavish jumped in a cab: her twenty-two-year-old Harley was in the shop, she’d dropped it on an icy corner a week earlier, fortunately she hadn’t been injured but the bike had been pounded. 
       When the taxi glided to a stop in front of FitzGerald’s Grocery Emporium the cabbie said: "Six smackeroos." 
      To Darlene's surprise the meter was double-jointed or two-faced showing separate prices for males and females.  The fare for women was $6.00 and the ticket for guys, $4.62.
         Darlene grumbled: "What the?  Where in the Constitution does it"--
      “Ahem.  Pardon me?  That’s just the way it’s always been,” inscrutable with hoodie eyes, the cabbie explained briskly.  “Ask anyone, missy."
      Missy?  Darlene took a deep breath, a brilliant calming technique learned from her YWCA Lamaze lessons.  Though mystified as to why it was cheaper for a man to ride in a cab than a woman Darlene still shelled out a fair tip: two bucks. 
       Inside Fitzy’s it was the same thing, the same inflammatory mystery lurked behind every price tag: milk was $4.00 for women and $3.08 for men, coffee $7.00 for women and $5.39 for men, and then the kicker, the final flipping insult, Tampons were $5.00 for women and $3.85 for men! 
         Tampons?!  Ahhhhh --
        Despite being outraged -- her little clamshell ears were fire-engine red (a real warning sign) -- Darlene gently -- breathing in and out, asked the mustachioed cashier with the pug-lumpy face, "What's going on?  Y’know this is unfair -- un-American.  It's flat out wrong."
     The cashier shrugged, and said with no small kindness, "Sorry, ma'm, but on the average women make seventy-seven cents for every buck a man makes in this country -- you do the math."  -end-   (posted earlier, and in the short story section: Darlene McTavish)  
 


Please give to the National Organization for Women -- NOW: 1100 H Street NW, Suite 300/ Washington DC  20005/ 202-628-8669