I walked into my department office yesterday right in the middle of a speech by one of my young unmarried colleagues. She was insisting that it's often the woman's fault men cheat on them. If women took care of themselves, if they got new clothes now and again, if they stopped focusing on everyone else...
"Men who want to cheat will cheat on the most beautiful women in the world," I announced.
"You shut up, Mr. Educator," suggested one of my female colleagues. "It's not your turn."
"So here's the thing," the young woman continued, "Women are always thinking about everyone else. They don't worry about themselves. If you give a woman a bunch of money and send her to a mall, she'll walk around and say, look, there's a suit, and it's on sale for $5oo. Then she'll buy it for her husband. Then she'll see baby clothes and say oh my gosh, those are beautiful. She'll get them too. Then she'll get something for the other kids, and by the time she's finished, she'll get herself a pretzel and that will be the end of it."
"It's because we think about everyone. We think deeply. Men aren't like that."
"I wonder what the pretzel symbolizes," mused another of my colleagues.
I wandered away to scratch myself.
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