Judge — April 1937 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

EN, God bless ‘em! I love them, I love all helpless creatures, new- born babies, kittens; pu pies, men. For a man’s helplessness is his most endear- ing quality. His complete and utter de- pendence on women is probably the only feason women tolerate men at all. Any woman knows that the more a man blusters the more he indicates his de- ndence on her. Nobody who doesn’t eel inferior ever has to assert his super- iority. He would just take it for granted. Men never take it for granted. They're forever talking about it, insisting on it. Some men may have almost convinced themselves of it. But they've never con- vinced a woman. Did you ever see a man whose wife had gone to the country? For about five minutes he glories in a feeling of new- found independence and freedom. But after five minutes he begins to wonder what he’s going to do with himself. He drops into the nearest bar for a drink, and the first thing he does is tell the bar- tender that his wife has gone away and that he’s a free man. Well, maybe he has one helluvah evening, but when he gets home he can’t find the aspirin for that splitting head, and in the morning he finds himself wishing someone else would stagger out of bed to make the coffee. But if there's one thing most males pride themselves on it’s their ability to make good coffee. So he drags himself out to the kitchen where he can’t find anything. Any wom. tan would know enough to look in a tin marked crackers for coffee and it's only one sign of a man’s limited intelligence that he doesn’t do this. Labels on can- nisters have always meant different things to the sexes. Men are so literal. A ten minute search reveals that there is no coffee in the house, or that's what he thinks. So, disgusted at what he, terms his wife's carelessness, he goes to the corner drug store for his breakfast. After that he has to go to the barber’ to get shaved. There wasn’t any hot water at home this morning because the little woman hadn't been there to remind him to poke up the fire the night before. It was an awful day at the office because his stenographer stayed at home with a cold, al he couldn't bark, “Take a letter” in his usual morning-after tone. When he got home that night he was surprised to find that the bed hadn't made itself, that the clocks had stopped, that his towel was still on the bathroom floor. He began to swear at the maid who hadn't shown up and then remem- bered that he hadn't phoned her that morning to tell her to come. Men al- ways pride themselves on their efficiency. Two weeks of this sort of wifeless existence is usually enough for any married man, but after his first en- thusiastic greeting of his wife on her April 1937 MEN! | LOVE THEM return he goes right back to being the man of the house. He criticizes the coffee, he runs his finger over the pic- ture frames, he brings home three dinner posts with no warning on a night they ad planned to go out, and he generally acts the part of a man who doesn’t need a woman in his scheme of things at all. And then take a man when he's sick. You take him. I don’t want him. He almost admits his dependence on women then. No male nurse would put up with half the nonsense he perpetrates on his wife or female nurse. There’s something in the sight of a woman sitting down that a man can’t stand. He demands and gets more attention than any woman ever does. He can’t stand pain any better than an infant. He fusses and worries over himself out of all pro- portion to his indisposition. However radical a man’s politics may be he’s sure to be conservative on one subject. His ideas about his family are usually years behind his wife's. He loves to brag about the way he holds his liquor but he doesn’t enjoy having his wife or daughter compete with him. A man may think nothing of coming home blotto, but let that same man see his wife wearing a glassy stare, and listen, if you can bear it, to what he has to say on the way women carry their liquor. Men love to discourse on the subject of a woman's sense of humor. I defy any man to listen with the same patient smile a wife has to put on the twentieth time the same good old story is dragged out for an airing. One of woman's greatest functions in relation to man is that of listener. How men love to polish the medals before a woman. The incessant knitting, in which women indulge to the irritation of why sho: their husbands, was undoubtedly adopted as a foil to the endless tales of their men’s heroism. If you have stitches to count you don’t have to pay the same rapt at- tention to what happened on the tenth green, or how that nine pound salmon was netted, Men love to say that women fuss about their clothes. Ask any laundry if the majority of complaints don’t come from men about the way their shirts and collars are laundered, Men complain that women change their minds. At least that indicates flexibility. Once a man’s mind is made up brave is the woman who attempts to get him to change it. Men call that strength of mind. Obstinacy, stubborn. ness are two of the politer words used to describe it. Strong men, so-called, like to think they can be coaxed but not driven. Men try to assert their superiority in odd little ways. Among remarks that women enjoy hearing men make are, “Well, what would you expect? It's a woman driver.” Men like to think they drive a car better than women. They love to talk about their superior mechan- ical minds, Most women can swallow all this with comparative equanimity. They can even stand having to account for their petty cash expenditures, having to laugh at the same joke years on end. They can stand most anything because they realize men’s dependence on them is complete. God bless men. They're so helpless. I love them. —Anita Rice Despres. "We're baie an awful time getting 2 maid—they all say ld they work when they can go on relief.” comicbooks.com