Women Write On Themselves

In an office supply store testing markers that come in thirty-six colors I took out my little pocket notebook and tried out a color from the free stock display called “Moonstone Yellow.”

The woman I was with tried out a dark color by drawing a small square on her left palm.

“Do you want to use my notebook?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “it’s easy just to use my hand.”

I watched her try another color by drawing a line through the small square.

“One of the checkout girls at the grocery store writes prices on her hand,” I said. “She said she loses notes if she writes them on paper.”

The woman I was with looked at me and her face took on an odd expression. It is hard to describe exactly what kind of face she made. She didn’t do anything special with her eyes or mouth but nonetheless she made an odd kind of face. It was a face I’d seen before.

“I’ve never seen a guy write on himself,” I said. “But now I’ve seen two or three women do it. It’s some kind of gender thing. Women write on themselves.”

“You’re going to go on about this all day now, aren’t you?” she asked.

“All day, hell,” I said. “This probably will be on my blog tomorrow.”

The woman I was with smiled, then got all focused and concentrated. She wrote something on the palm of her left hand. She stuck her palm up in my face for me to read what she wrote. She’d written, “Do not use my name!”

I smiled, too. I wrote in my notebook and held it up for her to see. I’d written, “Okay, I won’t.”

The woman I was with laughed.