Women’s Lib

This is what men feared would happen when women decided they’d had enough of  staying at home and raising the kids, so demanded jobs in the workforce and were out all day long and burned their bras. On the one hand, the men liked the idea of no bras, and then they missed all that lingerie. They thought that maybe if they paid women less money than they got, the women would decide to go back home.

Instead, the women got around the problem of not being around to cook real meals by preparing ready-made, pre-packaged or frozen foods in their new microwave ovens. Eventually, the children came to think of this as normal and didn’t question the Kraft Mac & Cheese Hot Dog pyramid.

The women, on the other hand, thought that this dish was a symbolic representation of the home under a masculine hegemony, laughed a little inside, then ate a salad.

Kraft’s Main Dish Cook Book, Pillsbury Company, 1970

Also from this book: Suburbanites, Mariachi Supper

All Wrapped Up

Guess what we did in gym class today.

Gym?

No! We did “sexed.”

You sexted people?

What?

Never mind. Oh — you mean Sex Ed. Two words.

It was weird.

Yeah. What did they tell you?

We learned all about prophylactics.

You did, huh?

I have no clue what that is.

It’s from the Greek, prophylaktikos, meaning precautionary. It was used in the 1570s to refer to something that wards off disease. You use a prophylactic if you’re being cautionary.

Wow. You’re pretty smart for an 8^th grader. You know everything! I wish our teacher had put it that way.

How did he put it?

He did a trick with a banana and a balloon. He kept saying we had to “pinch the tip,” but I don’t know what he was referring to.

Condoms.

What’s that?

A prophylactic. You use them if you don’t want to get a girl pregnant or catch a disease.

I’m confused. You eat bananas if you don’t want to have a baby?

No — you use a condom and pinch the tip.

Why do you have to pinch the tip?

When you — you know. Finish.

Oh…right, right. I know what you mean. I already do that.

What?

I pinch the tip. You know, to finish. Don’t you? Doesn’t everyone?

Er — whatev.

I’m still confused about something though. The teacher said if we don’t get the banana example, we should think of a hot dog wrapped up in wax paper. Then he made a joke about buns and “enjoying them with relish.”

Dude — your teacher sucks.

No — he doesn’t. He specifically said he doesn’t suck. I have no idea what he meant, but he said he wanted to make that very clear from the start.

Clarity seems to be his specialty.

I don’t know who she is, but he said something else was — it began with a C too — a foreign sounding word. What do you think he meant?

Never mind, young Paduan, never mind.

Microwave Miracles, Hyla O’Connor

Also from this book: Iron Feng, One Potato, Two Potatoes..., 1982, Circumcised Apples