Why Women Just Don't Get It

I had this weird dream last night. I was somewhere in the middle of the desert, possibly in Arizona (but don't you go quizzing me on geography now, I plead American), and this man came up to me and asked me if I would work at his casino for the night. He explained to me that there had been a sudden crackdown on British immigrants, and with Queen George becoming more and more insane every day (but don't ask me who She was, that is history and I am, as you know, American) there was little hope that any more of Her maverick pilgrims would come to that God-forsaken place of his. Well, you guessed it right, I said Aye to his offer. Coming to think of it now that I feel slightly more awake I don't really know why I said 'yes'; perhaps it was his awesome New England accent, or perhaps just his disarming smile like the one that my pet Guru in Orange county throws my way every now and then. So I went underground with him on an elevator, and saw myself in a place glittering with all possible sorts of lights. At the far end of the room I saw a blue-suited woman standing up on a high platform and making an impassioned speech : 'Friends, Americans, and countrywomen, lend me your reason. This new country here, under the earth, is a place of freedom, opportunity, liberty and equality. Everyone can become here just what they want to, if only they will try. As we used to say in the olden, and more colored (erm, I mean colorful) days, if you cannot lower the bar, just jump over it.'

And this talk about crossing a bar led to the following unbarred altercation between the lady (L) and some men wearing brown hats (BH).

BH : If we all jump across the bar, where is our social security? Who shall put the food into the rice bowl, Madame?

L : Silence! It is I who make the puns around here! The only security you are ever going to enjoy is that of your own privacy. I don't care if you land on an oil-field in the bush or on a mine-field in the desert, so long as you just jump. And just so that you know, I am the rice bowl of the world. Ahem.

BH : Amen!

Ah well, that was that. I mean there was much more to it than that, arrrghhhhhh, but believe me, you just don't want to know. Anyways, after some time, more and more people started streaming into the casino. My job was to hand out counters to the customers, and I was sitting at a purple desk near a huge green table. Towards midnight, a old man and his young wife, reeking of perfume, trotted up to the table. The man bought several thousand dollars worth of counters. Just as he was about to leave, he turned back towards me and asked : 'By the way, do you happen to know who won the Superbowl last night?'

I was quite shocked for I had absolutely no idea what the term 'Superbowl' referred to. I did remember the reference to a rice bowl by the lady earlier, but thought it was not a good idea to start that all over again. So I simply put on my best Alabama smile (again, don't quiz me on geography, thank you very much) and said : 'Excuse me, what is the Superbowl about? Something that supermen in spacesuit-like dresses do?'

There was a moment of deafening silence that echoed and reechoed down the hall. After what seemed like an eternity to me, the man's wife glared at me, and noisily stamped her right heel on the floor : 'See Robert! That's why a woman shall never become the President of this country! No sense of geography, no sense of history, and no sense of tradition. In fact, no sense at all. Utter nonsense. O captain, my captain, you should have been living at this hour!'

I woke up just as the bells were ringing on Capitol Hill. Beside me was my lovely dog waiting for me with the morning edition of The Transparent Ironist between its brown teeth. Later in the day, I did a www.google.com search for 'Superbowl'. It was then that I realised why I had managed to irritate his wife so much. Yes, I was close, indeed too close for her comfort : the Superbowl is literally a game played inside a bowl by supermen wearing spacesuits.