Three Things That Women Own That Truly Baffle Me

I love women. I really and truly do. They are majestic, mysterious, delightful creatures that make my world go round and keep me well in line and firmly on my feet. As grounding and breath taking as they are and I could never live without one, I could however, live without a few of their seemingly favourite things. I dedicate this article to all of those ladies I have had the luxury of living with and apologise to them for never having the gumption to actually ask them about these mysterious bits and bobs.

Baffling Object No. 1

EyeLash Curlers

‘Please, no, no, get off, get off, don’t do that..nooooo!’ I have often woken up in a cold sweat screaming those words and clutching my girlfriend’s teddy bear. How embarrassing. Even more embarrassing is when she asks me what I was having my nightmare about. Obviously, I made something up about wrestling a dangerous, disturbed, vicious and unidentifiable beast in order to save her and her pile of Louboutins from imminent destruction. But that was because it was just too ridiculous to tell her the truth. The truth was, the dream was really about us sitting on the steps of her Nan’s house, sun shining and my sister trying to curl my eyelashes with those, erm, things, yes, that’s right, eyelash curlers. My God..who invented those crippers?

Apparently, it was Charles Stickel and William McDonell from Rochester, New York. Two blokes. What is the purpose of those things? Of course they are meant to curl eyelashes but as far as I can see they look like something aliens would use in an extra-terrestrial hernia operation. Plus they hurt. Almost every time women use them I hear them yowl in agony for having caught their eyelids in them and even if they do succeed in clasping the lashes between it’s flashing jaws, they don’t look any different afterwards! Frankly, the only thing they manage to curl is my toes and besides, they give me nightmares. How you ladies cope and why, I have no idea.

Baffling Object No.2

Jewellery Stand

Boys like drawers. Well I like drawers. When I was a kid, I remember coveting my Dad’s top drawer. I’m not sure whether I was even allowed to go in it but I did anyway. Just to look. It was filled with pen knives, boxes of cufflinks, folded up, freshly pressed handkerchiefs with his initials on, a clothes brush, mini screwdrivers, old broken watches, chains, a few rings. It sounds chaotic but it made perfect sense to me and seemed very organised. All those things seemed to belong together, were easily accessible and tucked neatly out of the way. I have taken that memory with me to adulthood and now, my own top drawer is very similar. I have everything in there that my Dad did, bar the handkerchiefs and clothes brush.

My sister on the other hand has a jewellery stand. Heard of it? Well, she swears by the thing. This jewellery stand is in the shape of a tree and probably, by now, weighs the same as an actual real tree. This jewellery stand is straining under the weight of a whole heap of chains, 20 fingers worth of rings, some beaded things, some things that I believe may be brooches and a million pairs of dangly earrings to boot. In fact you can hardly tell it’s a tree. It just looks like a mess to me and for some reason every time I walk past the thing it seems to attach itself viciously to my jumper and end up on the floor, which means I have to spend 10 minutes crawling around under the bed to find runaway earrings. Lord help me, I have tried to love the thing but it just doesn’t get any easier. I have bought her a jewellery box but she refuses to give it a chance and the jewellery stand stands.

Baffling Object No.3

Diffuser

Diffuser. Diffused? Confuser? Confused? I certainly am when it comes to this gismo. What do these things actually do apart from get in the way? To be honest I kinda liked it at first when it moved in along with the girlfriend. Maybe it is because I am a bloke, but it looked like a ray gun when it was squeezed onto its rightful place at the end of a hairdryer and it also made me think of Star Wars and about ‘using the force’. Unfortunately for me it’s not a ray gun, and is a million light years from anything Star Wars related. Basically, it’s a pain in the bahookie, for several reasons. Reason number one. She never uses it but it always seems to be about somewhere. Gathering dust between its bumpy, useless plastic teeth it is either gloating at me from the dresser whilst taking up an inordinate amount of room or it is poking out sneakily from under the bed, always at the ready for me to step on it’s bobbly body with my bare feet and make me curse out loud.

Reason number two. Once upon a time when she did use it, it didn’t do anything! I remember her holding her head upside down and pressing the thing against her head, heaped full of damp hair and with a force ten hot air gale blowing from the hair dryer and then through the diffuser’s grizzly teeth. She would then eventually lift her head up and say ‘Ta da!’ All I would see is a mad scientist kind of hair do that could have easily have been created if we had left that half hour earlier and she had stuck her head out of the car window as I drove. However, when I suggested that she said that was too dangerous and it didn’t give her ‘curls’ like the diffuser does. I nodded and promptly stepped on the thing; yet again. Ouch. This curling business is dangerous!