Advice to Men

Every now and then Contessa shares her wisdom with the unwise: men.

Situation # 1

I recently had a skin cancer biopsy on my forearm and was seeing a surgeon about its removal. No need to worry. It wasn’t my tippling arm.

Just a few days after the biopsy, I developed a pain in my elbow. Any correlation, I asked Dr. Almighty Dollar. Nope. I was probably “favoring” my arm, he said.

Advice: Bad choice of wording Surgeon Sawbucks, unless you’ve got an urge to try your hand at self-suturing. Never, ever tell a woman who, in the last decade endured both a 15-hour labor and delivery without the benefits of an epidural AND taught teenage boys how to drive that her pain is due to ‘favoring.’ Contessa isn’t known for favoring. Well, maybe Merlot over Chardonnay.

Situation #2

Yesterday I delivered a home-cooked meal to a young couple with a newborn baby. I’m a volunteer “Caring Cook” from my church. Ironic, eh? No one’s caught wind of Contessa’s culinary feats, such as the time she baked cookies for Pinot & Grigio’s first gal-pals. One of the girls ended up in the hospital suffering from an allergic reaction. On her birthday, no less.

When I stepped into the family living room, dad was cradling his son. Looking at his baby decked out in blue jammies and matching sock-hat from the hospital sent me flashbacking to those first days with the twins seventeen years ago. I was flooded with memories of them sleeping all day, staying awake until wee hours in the morning, and chowing down every three hours. Oh, right, that was just last spring break.

Dad jockied the boy around so I could get a better look and I could tell him how cute his son was. I guess I didn’t get a good enough look to tell daddy-o what he wanted to hear (he looks just like you?), or maybe he assumed all women were longing to hold babies, but he thrust junior toward me and asked if I’d like to hold him.

“No.”

Contessa managed with one word to shatter a young man’s delusion that a stranger kind enough to cook them dinner might also enjoy relieving him of his wife’s-in-the-kitchen-time-to-take-baby duties. Not on your life.

Advice: Don’t make assumptions about older women and babies, especially when the woman had hers two at a time. At least not until after you’ve eaten her dinner.