Just what Age is this anyway???

Let women be what God intended, a helpmate for man, but with totally different duties and vocations. --Queen Victoria

Someone asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true and incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.--Gloria Steinem

When I married in 1977, I did not understand the extent of my gamble. I deluded myself that one of my God-given vocations was to sand off the annoying rough edges on my spouse so he would quit chewing toothpicks and leaving his used dental floss on the red shag carpet back beneath the macrame plant hanger beside the waterbed.

I believed that the converse of Queen Victoria's proclamation was that men were intended to be helpmates for women, but with totally different duties and vocations. A man's God-given duties and vocations, in my mind, were to deal with taxes, cars, and insurance.

My spouse insisted my God-given duties included sitting beside him and giving him my undivided attention and worshipful adoration while he surfed through t.v. channels and viewed an unending string of lowest common denominator Blockbuster rentals consisting almost entirely of swearing, sex, car crashes, explosions, abusive and addictive relationships. And the lord said, "It is not right that Woman should sitteth and knitteth while Man is watching t.v. It is not right that Woman should addresseth envelopes for Christmas cards, or in any way diverteth her attention from Man while he pursueth his leisure viewing on the couch."

My spouse felt his God-given vocation was to badger me about exercising, and to allow me quiet, solitary (child-free) times only to work out, or to run. Not that I'm bitter or anything! I did derive benefits from exercise, and enjoyed it sometimes, but the emotional baggage was heavier than the Nautilus weights.

It's amazing the gamble lasted nearly nineteen years, and produced three fantastic sons. It's not surprising that I had to reshape my attitudes about exercise and fitness. I had to find my own motivations, minus the baggage.