Category: Diversity

The importance of supporting diversity

Categories
Diversity

Eating dog food

This week is the week for conferences, beginning with SXSW in Austin, followed by O’Reilly’s Emerging Tech conference somewhere in California.

I was a bit disappointed to not be able to go to either, but was surprised by the number of emails from folks who thought I would be at SxSW. I guess it’s the whole “where are the women” thing, which from a post about Zeldman’s opening act, seemed to be emphasized. Interesting. If anyone attends the “Where are the Women” session, send me a link to your impressions.

Hopefully some of the sessions I’m interested in from both conferences will be posted online in one form or another. But did Zeldman really say something to the effect that Anyone good at web stuff is here, anyone who isn’t pretty much sucks? Nah — Zeldman is anal, but he’s not a snob. Must have been joking.

In the meantime, Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag sent me a copy of their book, “The Zen of CSS Design”, which promises hours of interesting reading. Maybe I’ll learn enough so that I won’t suck, and I, too, can be a SxSW attendee in the future.

Categories
Diversity Technology

Guys Don’t Link

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The Better Bad News folk did a take on the AutoLink fooflah, which is worth a chuckle, though not necessarily a guffaw. However, what I found more interesting about the page is the *list of webloggers that the BBN folks referenced:

1. Opt Out Petition
2. Dan Gillmor
3.The Scoblizer

4. Dave Winer
5. Cory Doctorow
6. Time
7. Mark Jen
8. Steve Rubel
9. Kas Log
10. Tim Bray

with sonic support from Plastikman

Aside from the Time article, which is actually written by a woman, and the petition, all of the webloggers linked were men. Every single one.

This matched closely what I found at Doc Searls, in his post on AutoLink. He references the following bloggers:

Steve Gillmor
Tim Bray
Dave Winer
Dan Gillmor
Fred Von Lohmann
Craig Burton

ubermostrum at kuroshin

Again, all guys.

Point of fact, if you follow the thread of this discussion, you would see something like Dave linking to Cory who then links to Scoble who links to Dave who links to Tim who links to Steve who then links to Dave who links to Doc who follows through with a link to Dan, and so on. If you throw in the fact that the Google Guys are, well, guys, then we start to see a pattern here: men have a real thing for the hypertext link.

Well, huh. How about that. Not being a guy, I couldn’t understand this male obsession with the link, so I decided to call on an expert on gender roles about the issue: Lawrence Summers, Harvard’s current President.

“Larry,” I said. “What is is with guys and links?”

“Well Shelley, statistics–now, don’t worry, I won’t show you any actual values because being a women and all, we know that you can’t do more than count your ten fingers and toes–anyway, statistic show that guys are linked more than women, and link to each other more than they link to women. And when one guy links to another guy, a whole bunch of other guys come along and link them both, and then start linking to each other.”

“I’m aware of the behavior, Larry. But what causes it?”

He beamed at me, patted me on my head and chucked me under the chin. “Why honey, it’s because the male brain is wired for linking!”

I’ll have to admit, I was taken aback by Larry’s response. I mean, it didn’t make sense that a guy’s brain could better handling linking, especially since women also use the link.

“Larry, are you sure that linking isn’t a pattern based on cultural and social similarities, rather than gender-based differences in the brain? Guys are linked more because our current society and most cultures still see men as ‘authorities’, regardless of demonstrated capability?”

Larry just smiled, somewhat sadly and shook his head.

“All too often we think that guys are linked more than women because of social patterns, but that’s really not the case. Look, there are three reasons why men are linked more than women, and I’ll take them in the order of importance.”

He held up the index finger on his right hand. “The first reason men are linked more is based on interest and time. Women just aren’t interested in weblogging as much as the men, and don’t have the time for it, even if they are interested. You ask both men and women the question, ‘What’s more important: your families or your weblog?’ and I bet you’ll find that women, overall, will pick their families over their weblogs.”

He held up the middle finger on his right hand. “The second reason is aptitude — men and women’s brains are different, and men are more equipped to handle the complexities of the link, as compared to women.”

Larry then held up the third finger, almost indifferently and said, “And then there’s the social issues, but I don’t want to get into this because anything having to do with social issues means folks like me have to change, and we don’t want that.” He quickly lowered his third finger. “And I don’t want to get into time and interest, because I’m running out of time and the topic has little interest.”  And with that, he lowered the index finger, leaving only the middle finger raised.

“And that leads us back to men and women’s brains being different, and men being better equipped to handle linking.”

At that point, Larry noticed the stunned look on my face, my mouth opened in astonishment. He said, “Seriously, I think it’s important to focus this topic on the hard wired differences between men and women, virtually to the exclusion of any other discussion.”

“To take an example I discussed previously, when I gave weblogging tools to my twin little girls, and they are Daddy’s good little girls might I add, it wasn’t long after I showed them what a link was that they were calling them ‘Daddy links’, ‘Mommy links’, and ‘Baby links’. Leaving aside that all the television they watch features ads with little girls playing house and pretending to be mommies, how else can you explain this behavior other than the female brain perceives the link in a different way from the male brain?”

The conversation continued from that point, but I don’t remember much of it as my brain was in a red haze–I imagine that Larry would say it was because I am a woman and we were, after all, discussing links. Later that day, though, not feeling overly satisfied with his answers, I sought out the one fountain of wisdom I always returned to, again and again, whenever I was troubled about gender issues: Mags the bartender down at the Bushels of Beer Bar & Grill.

When I got there, business was slow and Mags was wiping down the counter. Her hair was steel gray, though strands of golden blonde appeared here and there–she always did miss a few when she colored. Peering out at me from behind thick, fake glasses, she smiled broadly, easily re-cutting the lines long creases into her cheeks. She was a lovely woman, though she spent a great deal of time trying to live this down.

“Shelley! What are you doing here on a fine afternoon! I thought you walked during this time of day?” she said, reaching under the counter at the same time to get the mixings for my usual margarita.

“Skip the drink today, Mags.” I said, heavily, as I plopped down on the stool. “What I want from you is advice, not booze.”

I then proceeded to tell her all about Google’s new AutoLink, and my own findings on men and links, and the conversation with Larry the Harvard President. She nodded from time to time, as if nothing I said was unexpected. When I was finished, she looked at me a moment and then did something she rarely did — come out from behind the counter to sit on the stool next to me.

“Shelley, I’m not surprised by anything you’re saying. But you might be surprised when I say that I sort of agree with your Harvard President — men do think differently about links than women.”

I was surprised, and showed it.

“Oh, I don’t mean that men and women’s brains are wired so differently that men are naturally more adept at linking then women. No, the difference between men and women lies in how men perceive links, not their ability to use them.”

She leaned closer to me, even though no one else was in the place.

“You see, guys see links as an extension of themselves. ”

Extensions of themselves? Extensions? Slowly, understanding dawned.

“You mean…”

“You always were a bright girl, mores the pity.” She said, winking at me. “You got it in one. To you and me, a link is just a link. To a guy, however, a link is something special, a part of himself. The most,um, important part of himself.”

Time for plain speaking. “Mags, are you telling me that guys equate links with their dicks?”

Mags just smiled, patted my hand one more time, and then got up and moved back behind the counter.

“Shelley, to a woman, a link is a way of connecting and being connected. To hearing and being heard. But not so for a guy. Guys see links as power, and therefore something precious, and to be protected. They hold on to their links as tightly, and as lovingly, as a thirsty drunk holds onto a bottle.”

At that moment I had a mental image, of a male weblogger I know, carefully adding a link to his post, bright, feral grin on his face, manic glaze to his eyes. But instead of typing into a keyboard he was…oh, that’s disgusting!

I shuddered, world twisted upside down. “Surely, Mags, not all guys think this way!”

Mags shook her head. “No, this attitude isn’t universal among men. There are many guys who see a link as nothing more than a way of inviting a conversation or passing along useful information. They link without regard to the consequences, and the most they hope for is that it might spark an interesting discussion.”

She stopped wiping the counter and leaned closer to me, lowering her voice. “The power-link guys have a word for men who link just to link,” she whispered. “They call them linkless.”

At that point, a couple of people entered the bar and Mags hurried off to do her job, leaving me to think on our extraordinary conversation. The more I thought on Mags words, though, the more I could see the truth in them. Much that has confused me about this environment is explained if one considers for a moment that some men think of links as some form of virtual penis.

For instance, ‘nofollow’ wouldn’t just be a misuse of HTML and a way for Google to solve the weblogger pest problem: it would be way of increasing the power of one’s link– literally a hypertext version of Viagra. As for Google, it becomes both the hand and the condom, enabling and protecting at the same time.

Sites such as Technorati become the internet version of a locker room, where the guys can hang around, comparing themselves to each other. Those that come up short look at their better endowed brothers with both envy and admiration; sucking up in order to increase their own stature.

When we women ask the power-linkers why they don’t link to us more, what we’re talking about is communication, and wanting a fair shot of being heard; but what the guys hear is a woman asking for a little link love. Hey lady, do you have what it takes? More important, are you willing to give what it takes?

Groupies and blogging babes, only, need apply.

And the phrases, “circle jerk” and “Google juice”, take on new depth and sudden meaning in light of this discovery.

I wandered home from the bar, in a daze of comprehension so strong, it literally staggered me. I thought back on what started this all: the AutoLink. Now, I could understand the concern: it was all about protecting the Link.

What I see is functionality that can only be used in one browser, in one operating system, and only when the weblog reader pushes a button; when pushed, the tool only autolinks a few items: addresses and ISBN numbers and a few other innocuous odds and ends. To me, this is no big thing, but to those who run afeard of this technology, if we treat this service indifferently, other tools will take this as a sign of easy compliance and do truly evil things with the link.

We could then have ‘neocon’ and ‘progressive’ linking toolbars, that automatically link words such as ‘patriot’ to either Michelle Malkin or Atrios if the reader pushes a button. Or syndication toolbars that convert the word “Atom” to a link to the RSS 2.0 specification. (Resulting in such fine combinations as: “RSS 2.0 and Eve” and “Water is made up of two RSS 2.0 of hydrogen and one RSS 2.o of oxygen.”)

Why, some toolbars might even link terms to Wikipedia entries, and modern civilization, as we know it, would collapse into tattered heaps of folksonomic trash.

But not all guys saw AutoLink as the damnation of all mankind. No, a few anarchists in the crowd are always looking for opportunities to rip open the constraints and just let it All Hang Loose.

Yes, so much is explained now. Where I saw AutoLink as a relatively uninteresting and innocuous innovation, to some guys it was a way of dropping their pants and swinging what they got, while to others, it was a big metal Zipper, just waiting to catch the unwary.

Categories
Diversity

My first man woman post of the new year

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I never feel totally complete until I’ve written my first man/woman post of the new year. Thankfully, I’ve been given an opportunity tonight. Lauren from Feministe points to an article written by a Fox journalist about opening a door for a woman and her getting irritated by the act. Michelle of A Small Victory joined in on the discussion at her site, which can usually be counted on to be a good show.

Lauren and Roxanne debated the truth of the story, primarily because they have not seen a woman respond angrily for having the door held open for them.

Michele, though, thinks the story is accurate and puts on a pretty good rant about women such as this. The part I liked best follows:

Yet there are women who feel coddled and like lesser beings when someone – in particular a male someone – extends a courtesy to them. I can’t imagine the size of the stick that needs to be up one’s ass in order to feel slighted by an act of politeness. It must be painful to walk around like that all day. And I wonder what the same woman would think if a man walked into a store in front of her and let the door just close behind him – she would probably tell him that he’s insensitive to the needs of women and is therefore a misogynist.

You can’t win with people like that. You’re either making them feel like puny humans or you’re being condescending by trying to not make them feel like puny humans. If having a door held open for you makes you feel weak, then I suggest you have some deep-rooted problems in regards to male figures and your militant feminism is only going to exacerbate your already seething hatred towards the male species. Here’s their core belief:

Men are evil.
Men who are nice are even more evil because they are only being nice in order to subjugate you.

Personally, I like evil men. I like men with black hair, black eyes, and black hearts. When they have their way with you, they’re doing so because they really want to, not because they’re being polite. It’s a boost to one’s self-esteem.

Seriously, I have never seen a woman get mad at a man for him holding the door open for her. I have seen people a little frustrated when the person holding the door is 50 feet away, thereby forcing the recipient of the courtesy to sprint for the exit so as not to seem like they’re taking advantage of the kindness.

I hold doors open for anyone behind me when I deem letting it go would close it in their face. I also open doors for elderly people, people with lots of packages, lots of kids, or both. I have rarely seen anyone who doesn’t perform this simple act of courtesy.

But I think that Lauren, Roxanne, and Michele all missed something in Cavuto’s description. According to his writing, earlier he had stepped out of the way to let the woman off the elevator. I think readers assumed that he did so when he was getting on. However, if he also held the door open for the lady, he must have been getting off at the same floor as she, and was in the front of the elevator. When the doors opened, he would have probably stepped aside and gestured for her to leave first.

Now, I also do this in elevators – for old people or others who are infirm, or if the elevator is full and I have the best access to either the door or the open button. If this happened to me, and it was only the two of us, I would have felt uncomfortable with the gesture. Now, if he did this, and then sprinted ahead of me to hold the door open, and did so with a coy flourish, I might have made a comment to the effect that I am neither old nor infirm, but thank you all the same. Depending on how much flourish he used would determine the degree of crispness I imbued into my response.

That’s the devil in tales such as these: making a judgment of behavior based on one event and one perspective, when acts such as these usually follow on a sequence of intricate, interwoven events.

I would agree with Michele that the writer is most likely not lying, but I do think he has a biased perspective. Of course he has–all writers do. I would also say that the woman’s response could be accurate as portrayed, but when viewed from the perspective of the events I surmised from the writing, could also be quite understandable.

Additionally, and this to Mr. Cavuto: I don’t know about the door thing, but following a woman who obviously has no interest in your company and asking what got the bug up her butt will get you arrested here in Missouri, and most of the other 50 states. It’s called harassment.

My, that was a fun exercise. Now, where are the women of weblogging?

Categories
Connecting Diversity

The extrapolation factor

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Doug points to a post by Broad at Bat who discusses a recent dinner with friends and one couple’s behavior to each other. Specifically, she focuses on the wife, Sandy’s, behavior to her husband, Mark.

Later, Mark was telling us a story – nothing rude or anything, just something that happened earlier in the day – and in the middle of a sentence Sandy told him that was enough and we didn’t need to hear any more about it. He tried to finish his thought and she interrupted again, even more forcefully. That was when he shot Doc the WTF look, and Doc could only shrug helplessly. It was just a story! And one that I was enjoying, thankyaveddymuch. Aargh. Again, mouth dropped open, bit tongue, jesus, it’s no wonder I have jaw problems, I suppress things I’d dearly love to say sometimes.

This could be nothing more than another story about a dinner and married couple not treating each other well, except that Broad at Bat then takes what she sees with Sandy’s behavior and extrapolates from the specific woman to women in general.

The scary thing is, Sandy isn’t any different from MANY women we know. MA-NY! I have sister-in-laws who do the same kind of belittling and condescending treatment to my brothers and it makes me want to puke. If we counted up all our friends who do this, I’ll bet it’s over half. Even Sandy’s best friend spent more time rolling her eyes and clucking and admonishing her husband for his behaviour at the table, than anything else. She actually — I swear to god this is true — on their way out the door that night she apologized to us for her husband’s behaviour. While he stood right beside her! I couldn’t hold it in any longer and I told this woman I had only just met that I thought her husband was charming, he hadn’t been the least bit inappropriate, and she had no business apologizing.

Doug concurs with BaB, drawing on his own personal experiences:

If you’re a woman you can not imgine what it does to a man to be treated to the kind of abuse that BaB talks about. Society expects men to be strong, in command and there are a thousand ways to punish a man who is not, all of them designed to make him feel a failure. I’ve known so many men who have suffered enormous amounts of emotional abuse at the hands of the woman they loved. Why do they stay in the relationship? Some of the same reasons women stay in abusive relationships: insecurity, love, fear of failure, children (men do not stand a chance in a custodial battle), financial reasons, broken spirit. Many men in such relationships live lives of quiet desperation, sick at the thought of stayin, afraid to leave, afraid if they do they’ll never have another partner, marked loser for life, some invisible cabalistic sigil planted on their forehead that only women can see and immediately reject them as a loser not worth her attention. Oh, most men have experienced that feeling well, but we don’t talk about it.

In my life I must have moved in different circles because most of the couples I’ve known seemed to treat each other with respect, affection, and humor. Not all–I have seen just such a woman that BaB describes. And while I may concur with BaB that I haven’t seen this as much with men treating women that way, that’s usually because with these men, the ‘little woman’ is left at home to care for the kids.

Still for the most part, the couples I’ve known treat each other decently in public. So much so that when they break up, it amazes me sometimes. But then, I know that many people were astonished when Rob and I broke up because we got along so well. We still do — heck we’re roommates.

However, to say that this type of behavior is predominately female, or that it occurs in many women, is to take the responsibility of ‘people behaving badly’ off the individual and place it on a gender, and that’s something I just can’t agree with. But then, I was an abuser myself, long ago, so perhaps I can’t really speak on this issue.

My first husband was an amazingly handsome man — black hair, brilliant blue eyes, the strong bone structure of his Native American heritage. He was tall and lean and moved like a panther and I was swept off my feet and into marriage far too quickly. And too young, being only 16.

Steve was not an unintelligent man, but he was an uneducated one, having suffered from learning disabilities and finally dropping out of school when he was 15. He was very sensitive about this, and in particular, his difficulty with reading. I, on the other hand, loved to read and had been reading since I was five and counted books as some of my best friends.

Steve worked but didn’t want me to work because this just wasn’t done in his family. So after he went off in the morning, I would do whatever baking I had planned for the day, do the house cleaning, and whatever else needed doing, and then I would spend some time either walking in the fields surrouding our house, or reading. We lived in the country and I didn’t know how to drive, and we lacked television reception, so I didn’t have many other options.

The county had a library system whereby a person could fill out requests for books and they’d be mailed. Then when we were finished, we would put them back into the envelopes provided, and mail them back. It was perfect for me, because I didn’t have to pay postage, and I could get books without being able to visit the library.

When Steve came home from work, to sit down to his home cooked meal (and I was, and am, a good cook), he’d talk about his job, what this person or that said or did. About the only thing I had to talk about was what I had read that day, so I would talk about the books. I used to love talking about whatever book I was reading — sharing the characters and the experiences one feels as the words wrap around one.

(I still do to this day, though I am reluctant to bore another individual with my ramblings, which is why all of you are blessed with my many writings — lucky yous.)

Now, I imagine to BaB, this would seem that I was taunting poor Steve — him with his reading disability, me with my love of, and discussion about, books. It was not the intended purpose, but perceptions are so dependent on the person. Regardless, Steve felt that I was ‘making fun of him’ and forbade me to have any more books in the house. Not one book.

Of course, I could disregard what Steve wanted and just continued with my reading as is, but I was dependent on him, in more ways than one, so I tried to give up books. I would fail, at times, and sneak one in, hiding it from him, but only rarely; only when I was desperate. To fill the hours, those long, long hours, I obsessed about ‘making’ things — once spending three months making Christmas stockings out of felt and hand embroidering and beading each individually, for everyone as a Christmas present.

This state couldn’t last and after a few years, we divorced. Since that time, I have developed this oddball habit of reading three or four books at a time, leaving them laying face down (I know, librarians cringe) here and there, even in the bathroom. And my mom says its a shame that I stopped doing embroidery, because my work was astonishing in its detail.

When BaB talks about Sandy’s behavior to Mark, I do empathize with Mark, and wonder why he doesn’t leave his wife if their marriage is so much hell. I empathize with anyone in a marriage where the partner is abusive, physically or mentally or emotionally. However, they do have a recourse: they can leave.

Easier said then done? True, especially when there are children involved. But it is doable, and in our society people have the legal right to not live in an abusive relationship. If Mark choose to do so, then perhaps there is more to the story to Mark and Sandy than meets the eye, but we’ll never know because the only facet we know of this relationship is what we’ve heard,

Doug writes of his own experience being emotionally abused, and brings up the concept of a person who is easy to abuse:

Guys like me are very easy to abuse. We love fully, unconditionally. We care deeply for our partners and we do not like confrontation, in fact we avoid it at all costs. That’s what happens to non-alpha type males in this society, if you can’t strut your stuff and rise to the top of the pecking order you better be non-confrontational or you’ll be destroyed. That makes it very easy for women to abuse us emotionally, making you feel even more like a loser.

I have to disagree, but respectfully, with Doug about a woman making a man feel like a loser; the only person who can make us feel like a loser, is ourselves.

I’ve also never believed that one should love anyone unconditionally, and this includes our parents, children, and especially our significant others. To do so is to put too high a trust on the other, which forms an unreasonable demand that the other never do anything that could cause harm. But what is harm? To a kid in high school, harm is not being able to stay up all night with his or her friends. In my first marriage, the ‘harm’ was me talking about books because my husband has a reading disability, and therefore I should give up one of the joys of my life in the interest of his self-esteem. Harm is not being perfect and never making mistakes, and not sharing equally all the enthusiasms of your partner.

Loving unconditionally also means that you stay with a drunk, even if they go back to the bottle; you don’t kick your kid out for bringing drugs and drug dealers into the same house where his young, pretty sisters sleep; you pretend not to see that your partner is sleeping around.

Unconditional love is a burden and a cage, on both partners, and one that I’ve rejected, absolutely and completely; so much so that I am ambivalent about now having another long term relationship. I have found a beauty, fragile as the finest Fleur de Sel, in those times of loneliness I experience, and I hesitate to challenge the balance I’ve been able to achieve in my life between wanting to be with another and being content to be only with myself.

But I digress. To return to BaB and her statement that ..when it comes to public degradation and disrespect, it happens way more than my stomach can handle, and always by the women , says as much about the person making the statement, as it does the statement being made. For instance, does BaB see this preponderance of mentally abusive behavior in other women she knows because it really exists in the people around her? Or does she only ’see’ this behavior in women, because doing so sets her apart? In her own words:

I, as usual, end up leaving to go sit with the men before I say something and make any more enemies. Not that doing that endears me to other women much either, though. Sigh.

(emph. mine)

Perhaps if BaB sat with the other women a bit and actually talked with them, she might find the answers she so earnestly seeks.

Categories
Critters Diversity

The lion walks tonight

Today I took Zoe to the vet for her six months checkup, both for her rare seizures and her slightly enlarged thyroid gland. The doctor and I talked about putting Zoe on Phenol Barbital, a small risk anti-seizure drug for cats. However, roommate and I are hesitant to start her on a lifetime medicine when her seizures are about one every two years.

We spent a fairly long time chatting, which unfortunately made the doctor late for her next appointment. In the office afterwards, paying the bill, a large, heavyset man stormed out of one of the waiting rooms into the reception area, complaining bitterly about having to wait 20 minutes for the doctor.

After he stormed away, I apologized to the receptionist and she said not to worry about it; that his behavior wasn’t uncommon with men, especially middle aged men, as the place is very female centric and this brings out the male need to assert their dominant status.

I hadn’t noticed before, but the cat clinic does have a strongly feminine environment. All the doctors and assistants and other office workers are women, and the décor has a very feminine, feline feel to it–not to mention that all the cats that wonder around the office are also female.

All except the newest addition to the office — an eight week old orange tabby kitten that jumped up on the receptionist’s keyboard when she was making out my bill (”Well, your bill is now 362.00 dollars”); and then jumped up on the counter and immediately planted it’s tiny paws on my chest, gazing at me with eyes gold and round and very intense.

Entranced, I stroked and coo’d, which he seemed to take as encouragement, for it launched itself down from the counter to the floor (me catching it halfway, because that was a heck of a jump), and he immediately went over to Zoe’s carrier and started batting at her with his paws through the wire.

Zoe was hunkered down in the corner in misery, as she always is when at the vet’s and ignored him at first. But he was having none of this and after about a minute, she was nose to nose with him, each softly batting at each her, she as charmed by this wonderful little character, as I was.

I asked the receptionist who the new kitten was, and she said he was another abandoned kitten, dropped off at the office. The clinic won’t turn any cat away, and after making sure they’re healthy and nicely social, the workers manage to always find a home for the orphans. It took every ounce of self-control — every ounce! — not to pop up with, “I’ll take him!”

The receptionist turned back to the bill, dropping the eight blood tests that the kitten had added with his dance on the keyboard, while I watched the kitten gambol about the room. Suddenly, we hear a door slam, and heavy footsteps stomping down the corridor.

It’s the Big Man again, and he enters the room, drawing his breath to start huffing and puffing about his importance and how his time is valuable. However, the kitten spots him from across the room, makes a mad dash straight for him, and then with a flying leap, plants his tiny little kitten claws into the mans polyester pants, and starts climbing his leg, for all its little worth.

The man was startled, and sputtered out in surprise, looking down at this little kitten hanging off his leg, looking up at him. After just a moment of man and kitten staring at each other, the kitten jumps down from his leg, and glaring equally at me and the receptionist, the man storms off without saying a word. The kitten watches after him a moment, and then starts its mad dash around the room again.

The receptionist and I look at each other, both trying not to laugh; a resolve I couldn’t maintain when she turned back to the bill, casually tossing out about, “…knowing who’s the dominant male in the place is now, don’t we?”