Mars and Venus

A few weeks ago, I told Doug about an experience I had at the nail salon.

A woman sat in the pedicure chair next to me.

Before Tiffany, the nail technician, started this lady’s pedicure, the lady said, “Oh, don’t massage my legs.”

Then she leaned toward me and said, “I have cancer.”

She had breast cancer, then it spread to her bones and she couldn’t handle any pressure on her legs.

Then she proceeded to tell me everything about her life.

Her husband divorced her. She had no children. Her family lived in Florida. She didn’t have a job she liked. She was lonely.

As I spilled out this story to Doug, he said, “Wait a minute. You were just sitting next to her in the salon and she started telling you all of this?”

“Yes… and she told me she’s lost her sex drive because of her meds. Then, she said…”

Doug interrupted me and said,”What? She told you about her sex drive?”

“What is it about women? Everywhere you go, people tell you things. Men never do that.”

While I didn’t ask her any questions to prompt all these disclosures, I’m not sure Doug believed me.

Women talk, share, and talk some more even if we don’t know each other.

Coming out of the gym together a few years ago,  I started to tell Doug a story about a woman I met in the dressing room.

He said, “Women talk to each other in the dressing room?”

“Of course. Women talk everywhere,” I told him.

He said it is silent in men’s dressing rooms.

Perfectly silent, and it would be creepy to start chatting with a man while he’s either getting dressed or undressed.

“Men don’t do that,” he said. “Ever.”

I often come out of public restrooms with stories about women I’ve met.

“How do women do that? They just strike up the most random conversations,” he said. “And in the bathroom? Really?”

“Don’t men talk in restrooms?” I asked.

“Oh gosh, NO! Never!”

If one man is standing at a urinal, another man never stands right next to him.

“You go to the next one over. There has to be one urinal between you, always.”

And, they never talk to each other.

I guess it just happens in the movies because I’ve seen a lot of uncomfortable bathroom scenes with man standing at urinals, talking.

In a real man’s world, apparently this doesn’t happen.

In the airport last week, I stopped in the restroom after our flight landed.

While I was washing my hands, I glanced up at myself in the mirror to see if I should fluff up my flat hair or dab on new lipstick.

A woman at the other end of the restroom said, “You’re beautiful. You don’t need a mirror.”

I don’t know how one thing progressed to another but by the time I left the restroom, we’d discovered I once worked with her sister.

So we left the restroom and visited all the way to baggage claim.

Doug saw us approaching him, and just shook his head.

I introduced him to my new friend and explained the random connection.

He looked baffled.

After the woman retrieved her luggage, she wrote down my phone number, gave me a big hug and kissed me goodbye on the cheek.

Best friends.

As she walked away, Doug said, “How did you even start a conversation with that woman?”

Before I could answer, he said, “Never mind. I can’t begin to understand how you get into these kinds of conversations with people.”

Later, we were standing in a hotel lobby after the Presidential debate.

I said to Doug, “I wish we had seen the debate. I’m eager to watch the rerun.”

A lady standing near me walked toward me and said, “Oh, Romney slaughtered him.”

Within a few seconds, the woman had given me her life story.

She was a Democrat and expected President Obama to “slay” Romney.

It shocked her to watch Romney win the debate, and she seemed befuddled.

When the elevator opened and Doug and I walked inside, again, he looked at me and said, “How do you do that?”

“She started it!” I said, like a guilty child.

Then, I shrugged my shoulders.

“I’m approachable, I guess. People tell me stuff.”

“Tell me about it,” he said. “Everywhere you go, you make friends. Every time you go into a restroom, you come out with a new friend.”

I’m not even going to mention my last trip to the nail salon and my new friend Jack.

He was getting his eyebrows threaded.

He’s from China and was living with his dad in Manassas, and just moved to Reston.

We both love Sweet Frog yogurt.

Next time after we get our brows done, we might slip over to Sweet Frog to see if they have pumpkin yogurt yet…