Living in a Testosterone World

I’m at the doctor’s again today. She is incredibly thorough and I’m now scheduled for tests on this and that until 2010. The only glitch with her is when I ask her (she, who is probably in her late thirties at most) why I have had this test result or that test result, she says “It is to be expected at your age, but we will check it out anyway”. Ouch.

I’m sitting waiting for yet another test (my folic acid level is too high apparently – whatever folic acid is!?). The lab is really busy and you take a number. I am told it is probably an hour wait. I think to myself that I can either be mad at this and fume silently or take it in stride and read the magazines and pretend the hour is a calm oasis in my day. I choose the latter. I read a really interesting article about the difference between how women and men handle stress. The short version – women tend to talk stress out with their friends; men use testosterone to “fight it out of themselves”. It being a health magazine; the upshot was that women deal with stress better than men do.

So an hour later, I have a two-second blood test and I am on my way. It is an absolutely beautiful spring day in Toronto and I am driving my treasured Mustang Convertible. Windows are open to the wonderful fresh breeze. I’m thinking it might even be warm enough to put the top down and live life large.

In a long line of cars trying to turn left from a southbound busy street onto an even busier westbound street, I’m in the middle of the intersection behind two other cars (it’s a very LARGE intersection). The first car goes through the yellow, the second car is almost creamed by a truck going northbound and barrelling through the yellow-now-turning-red-light. I decide not to chance it since the light is now clearly red. Problem is that I am well into the intersection at this point.

So, I back up as carefully and as closely as I can so I can get out of the intersection. The guy behind me can’t back up any further because he’s got a line of cars beyond him. I am more over the crosswalk than I am behind it, but still far back enough that people can go across without being in a line of traffic.

Some burly guy starts to cross the crosswalk. As he gets close to my car, he yells at me through my open window, ``Don`t ya think that if someone is trying to cross the crosswalk, ya`d move your car!``. I say, “I’m sorry; I don’t think I can get any further back than this; I’m sorry”.

AWWWWKKKKK. TWOOOONGGGNNHH.

He gathers the mucus in his throat and levels a full out gobspit on the hood of the Mustang.

Okay then, if I didn’t get the point of the magazine article, I sure did then. Full out testosterone in action.

Hey, guy, who was crossing Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe at around noon today in front of a red Mustang Convertible and who left a present on my hood, take it from a woman: Maybe next time, talk it out with your friends. It might be better for your health.

After all, your present to me lasted all of five minutes once it was dried by the sun and the wind. But Jim (who heard the story as soon as I got home) and I are seriously feeling pity for you that you must have been having such a bad day to be that upset by a trivial moment. Although I don't think you do pity well, I truly hope that life delivers you better days tomorrow and forever.