What Women Do

My friend and I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a women’s retreat recently. I have been wanting to attend this particular retreat for years. The retreat was everything I had hoped for. It was fun, inspiring, and educational. All of those are important components to this “teacher-minded” individual. Although I’ve been to hundreds of conferences and trainings, I have never been to an event that was 99% women. The venue even re-named the men’s rooms to ladies rooms for this particular retreat. Being a woman, I know a lot about our gender, but there are certain womanly characteristics that I have never noticed until this particular weekend, being surrounded by hundreds of my sisters. My friend and I frequently commented on these idiosyncrasies as they repeatedly occurred over the course of the 2 days.

1.     Women take cuts.

From the time we boarded the ferry’s parking lot shuttle, to the time we were dropped off at our car, lady after lady unapologetically made her way in front of us saying things like, “Oh, my friends are up there, so we need to get by, ” or they’d say nothing at all. As an educator, this is particularly annoying because we just know that taking cuts is probably the worst etiquette rule you can break. That’s not to say that teachers don’t take cuts, we just apologize, explain, and justify our rude behavior. “I’m know I’m taking cuts and I’m so, so sorry! It’s inexcusable, but I really just had to run to the bathroom. Will you please let me back in with my friend here?” So you can understand my impatience.

2.     Women save seats.

As we were herded into the hotel dining room, my friend and I scoured the long tables for two seats. As we looked left and right, we noticed seat after seat covered with napkins, name badges, and purses so that the seats could be saved for any number of absent friends. And what was again, somewhat surprisingly unapologetic. We were just met with head shaking and outstretched arms (so as to protect saved seats from two obviously ravenous women). My friend and I came up with a rule of our own. If you want to save seats, it can be no more than two, and for no more than 5 minutes. Or as we tell the kids on the playground, “Count to 100 and if your friends aren’t here yet, someone else gets to use that swing.”

Overall the event was wonderful. We definitely plan to do it again. The cuts-taking and seat-saving weren’t enough to ruin our time at this event. But next time we will be prepared to wait a little longer in line and we will definitely get to dinner early. And I can’t even promise that I won’t ever take cuts or save seats again. I am, after all, a woman too. And apparently, that’s just what we women do.