The Sound of Single

Prim Julie Andrews and cute singing kiddies
Old-fashioned movies with nursery ditties
God-awful plot-lines about nuns that sing
These are a few of my least favorite things
- from "My Least Favourite Things" - The Chaser's War on Everything

"I envy you," a friend told me at dinner last Thursday, "having a part-time husband who only lives you for with a few weeks of the year!" I nodded, only half-listening as I read the menu. Then, looking at the menu she asked, "What's spaghetti bolognese?"

I'm becoming a misogynist, I decided. Did I really want to KNOW someone who doesn't know what spaghetti bolognese is? After all, I recently dumped my hairdresser when she asked me - we were discussing the famous (in America "Tot Mum", Casey Anthony case) - what does "manslaughter mean?" Better to dump her than to explain by example ...

There are some things a person just cannot be expected to tolerate.

Could it be that I am intolerant by virtue of my genes? I remember both of my parents couldn't tolerate most people gladly. Perhaps the worst (or best) memory is of my mother coming home from lunch, where she'd been meeting a past work acquaintance - a woman who had left work on becoming pregnant. "I just HAD to get up and leave!" my mother explained. "That silly pregnant Arlene, she was sitting opposite me at the restaurant at Myer, when she suddenly vomited all over her lunch! I just got up and walked out!"

"You mean you just LEFT her there with the vomit and all?" the then innocent caring Katie, yet to become the misogynist Kate, explained.

"There's such a thing as self-control," my mother explained, adding "and besides, I frequent that restaurant often."

And there you were thinking that I was mean about the spaghetti bolognese.

Part of being intolerant is, I think, brought about from living alone. I read a New York Times article, One Is the Quirkiest Number - The Freedom, and Perils, of Living Alone. It's a definite must read. 50% of New Yorkers live alone.

Alone and yet ... I discovered that I was not alone in some of the "quirky" behaviors recounted by the the people New York Times writer Steve Kurutz had interviewed for the article. Amy Kennedy, a school teacher listed among her "domestic oddities ... removing only the clothes she needs from her dryer, thus turning it into a makeshift dresser". Exactly. I do that all the time. Why take them out to put them some place else only to be removed again?

In fact I indulge in a number of oddities listed in Mr Kurutz's article. I tried to think if I had any behaviors that were NOT listed. I could only think of one. When I need to wear something that is sitting in the dryer not quite dry, I don't have time to run the whole dryer-full for say, a pair of undies. I warm them up in the microwave. Apart from making them completely dry it is extremely fast and it always feels good putting on warm undies.

Now I realize that I haven't even gotten to what was to be the main subject of this week's post - my least favorite things. So dear reader, you will have to ...

Stay tuned.