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.
