Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Another tangent

Women are bad at telling stories.

They're really, really bad - there's no sugarcoating it.

I'm not saying all women struggle with the skill, that may be a little sexist and ignorant. What I'm saying is that between 99-100% of women have almost no idea what they're doing.

Girls, please don't get me wrong - we love you.

We love how you magically make our apartments smell like the fancy parts of a shopping centre we know nothing about.

We love what you've done with yoga pants.

Healthy food? We would never have figured out that was a thing.

We love having fun with you. We love making fun of you. We love a good, passionate, meaningless argument that we're never a chance of winning.

You're smarter than us, you're more mature than us. You're stunning. You're beautiful.

We can't believe you're still willing to be seen with us in public. Even after that whole Tony Abbott thing.

You challenge us to be better and get the best out of ourselves. We need you more than we'll ever let on. We're almost nothing without you.


But...


I can't begin to describe how hard it is to sit through your stories.

They're almost always bad.

The problem is simple - it lies in the tangent. The simple and painful inability to stay on topic.

One minute you're telling us about your day and a story about your friend, then you drift off to a world where we can't follow.

"So then I caught up with Judy. No, the other Judy. We met her at the restaurant where Bill had his birthday. It was the same restaurant where Carol and Steve broke up. Do you know what happened to Steve? I think he sold his business and got into personal training after the divorce. You know who else is a PT? My friend's room-mate, Joe. I wonder if he'd give us a discount on a few sessions. I could stand to lose the five kilos I put on during the Bali trip, but I know if I start getting into fitness I'll lose the time I put into reading. I'm loving that new book I'm on - it's from the same woman who wrote the ancient mystery series I went through last month. I hear the movie rights have been sold already and Tom Cruise is playing the lead - I always liked him in that movie. What was it? No, the other one in space. Oh! you know who really loves Tom Cruise? Judy! No, the other Judy."

We men stand there, ask you about your day, look you in the eye and do our very best to follow.

But it's hard - it's just too hard.

For a long time, I thought these stories were a test.

Surely, no one could tell stories like that on purpose? It must be a ploy to see if we're paying attention, right?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Now, again, I can't cast assumptions on all women, but I think they talk like this because they really, really enjoy it.

Bless them, they get really excited over a good gossip and after holding in so many random thoughts throughout the day they need to get them ALL out at once - absolutely no holding anything back.

There's no filter. No real care factor for the male listener. No planned-out delivery. No thought to how they sound.


I've met some fine exponents of the tangent, but none of them come close to the Queen - the "Tangentator" - my dear old mum.

When I'm back at the homestead or I'm chatting to Mum on the phone, I want to listen to her stories. I convince myself I'm locked in and ready for the ride.

Then, like every other time, I can't make it to the end - I fall short. I'm just not strong enough.

Every story branches out to another. The plot lines become impossibly-long.

I start out optimistically, but my mind finishes up in turmoil:

Ok, this sounds interesting and it relates to that thing we were just talking about.

Denise, who's Denise? STOP! Don't ask her. Nod and laugh.

The back story of some random needed to be explained. I hope this is relevant later. Don't say anything yet.

CODE BLUE! She's broken story ranks!

Ok, I think she's back to the original story.

No, wait, she's gone again.

How did we get to New York? What possible connection does it have?

Who is Bill?

Go back to the story.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Go back to the story!

Why are we talking about Dad's back hair? HOW DID WE GET TO DAD'S BACK HAIR?

Then, I'm gone. It's all over. The rest is white noise.

There's been one exception to this trait. One call I won't forget.

In October of 2014 I had a call from Dad's phone at 4pm.

I should have known it was going to be serious, because 4pm is prime Facebook game time for my old man.

It was Mum - she was on the way back from the hospital with Dad after getting results from a test.

"The news isn't good, I've been diagnosed with breast cancer," she said.

No tangent. Nothing. Just the cold shock that accompanies the C-word.

Everything since that day has been a blur.

Mum is one of the very lucky ones. Early detection. Early surgery. Fantastic care from medical staff who are the best at what they do.

The old duck has been knocked from pillar to post for the last six months and stayed strong through it all - in time, with some luck, she'll be healthier than when this all started.

We all have family and friends who have gone through it. There's always someone fighting a battle tougher than our own.

When those battles come, when the support floods in, it's the making of you.

I've never been a big fan of labeling people who are sick as 'brave'.

Being sick doesn't make you brave - nor does having your sickness treated.

What makes you brave is how you choose to battle the illness, how you choose to accept the support and help thrown your way, how you lead your family, how you maintain who you are and how you keep finding reasons to laugh all the way through.

Mum has been brave - she's been fantastic.

I've seen how needy she gets when she has the sniffles, so I was a touch concerned for Dad when she was first diagnosed, but I'm incredibly proud of her.

One thing I've noticed with Mum while she's been through her treatments is that her stories aren't quite as long and painful as they once were.

At first, I thought the chemotherapy was doing miracles and the Tangentator was cured, but that's not quite the case.

For the longest time, she lost a bit of her spark. As she's been forced to take a break from work and her life, she's also been looked at differently by her husband, her children, her family and friends. She's had to lead a different life.

Today is a big day for her - she goes through her final chemotherapy treatment. That life is almost over and with some more luck she can return to the one she left behind.

The rest of us will wait as the last six months becomes nothing but a footnote to the big picture.

When she's ready and those painful, never-ending tangents return, this whole saga will be just another story.

A story she'll tell really, really badly.