For International Men’s Day (which was celebrated yesterday) may I offer all the men out there the consolation that the following embarrassing scenario will never happen to you.
In the early nineties a friend of mine, Sorcha*, was required to get a residency permit while living and working in Germany. This meant a formal visit to the Ausländeramt (Immigration Registration Office) to register that she was an Irish resident working in Frankfort. The German official was seated behind a modern desk with polished black surface and chrome trim. “Guten Tag, mein Fräulein.” Serious occasion. Tick tock tick, tock. She is nervous. He seems rather haughty. He goes through her paperwork and asks a few questions. Then he asks her for her passport.
Now women have many things in their handbags – some things are for emergencies some are general purpose necessities. My own bag could be described as a hell pit: receipts, keys, tissues, purse, sanitary products, wallet, loose change, lipstick, comb, hairbrush, novel, used tickets, reading material, driving license, etc. And always, always, something nasty sticky and furry lurking in the bottom left hand corner. But I digress.
Sorcha pulls the passport from her bag and puts it on the desk between them. Instantly they both see – brace yourselves gentlemen – that a pristine white ST is stuck onto the front. In contrast to the black desk it is visually screaming at them. In panic she snatches it back. There is no way to be surreptitious now, so she has to let him watch her as she pulls the ST off. But it refuses to come off cleanly: a sticky gluey line remains on the front of the passport. Red-faced, she looks him squarely in the eye, and hands it back.
He opens it, flicks between the pages to check her picture, glances up at her face, closes it and goes to hand it back. But the fingers on his left hand are now stuck to the glue. A nasty sound, like a bandage being ripped off, is emitted as he unsticks himself from her passport to hand it back to her. That Sorcha holds a PhD in bio-chemistry and could have explained why certain glues adhere so well to plastic (rather than cotton) is small comfort - especially when she has just demonstrated so succinctly one of the complications of being a woman.
What else is good about being a man these days? I’m guessing the fact that you will never have to push a baby sized poo out of your bottom must be a bonus.
*Sorcha is not her real name. International Men's Day 2016 was celebrated on 19th November.
© Alison Hackett blog posted on 20 November 2016
In the early nineties a friend of mine, Sorcha*, was required to get a residency permit while living and working in Germany. This meant a formal visit to the Ausländeramt (Immigration Registration Office) to register that she was an Irish resident working in Frankfort. The German official was seated behind a modern desk with polished black surface and chrome trim. “Guten Tag, mein Fräulein.” Serious occasion. Tick tock tick, tock. She is nervous. He seems rather haughty. He goes through her paperwork and asks a few questions. Then he asks her for her passport.
Now women have many things in their handbags – some things are for emergencies some are general purpose necessities. My own bag could be described as a hell pit: receipts, keys, tissues, purse, sanitary products, wallet, loose change, lipstick, comb, hairbrush, novel, used tickets, reading material, driving license, etc. And always, always, something nasty sticky and furry lurking in the bottom left hand corner. But I digress.
Sorcha pulls the passport from her bag and puts it on the desk between them. Instantly they both see – brace yourselves gentlemen – that a pristine white ST is stuck onto the front. In contrast to the black desk it is visually screaming at them. In panic she snatches it back. There is no way to be surreptitious now, so she has to let him watch her as she pulls the ST off. But it refuses to come off cleanly: a sticky gluey line remains on the front of the passport. Red-faced, she looks him squarely in the eye, and hands it back.
He opens it, flicks between the pages to check her picture, glances up at her face, closes it and goes to hand it back. But the fingers on his left hand are now stuck to the glue. A nasty sound, like a bandage being ripped off, is emitted as he unsticks himself from her passport to hand it back to her. That Sorcha holds a PhD in bio-chemistry and could have explained why certain glues adhere so well to plastic (rather than cotton) is small comfort - especially when she has just demonstrated so succinctly one of the complications of being a woman.
What else is good about being a man these days? I’m guessing the fact that you will never have to push a baby sized poo out of your bottom must be a bonus.
*Sorcha is not her real name. International Men's Day 2016 was celebrated on 19th November.
© Alison Hackett blog posted on 20 November 2016
