Gender Wars: How Humor Can Make Peace

By Eddie Brady

This book is a collection of stories that attempts to explain the differences between men and women. The story collection is a literary pretension because Sigmund Freudthe acclaimed Austrian psychiatristcouldnt figure out the difference. But the French Chamber of Deputies and Sir John Mahaffy, professor at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, could. See their stories as well as the thirty-eight other stories contained within the covers of this book.

Heres one illustration: after twenty years of marital bliss, let us observe a conversation between a wife and a husband.

Wife: You should see a psychiatrist. Husband: Why?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543459005

Eddie Brady

He graduated from Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, with a major in business as well as graduating from Suffolk University School of Law, also in Boston, Massachusetts. He was invited to be a guest columnist and was published in suburban newspapers in the Boston Metropolitan area. He practiced law as in a corporate environment, as well as being a self-employed sole practitioner, specializing in personal injury law and civil trial practice. His published writings included memoirs, short story collections, a novel, a novelette, and a screenplay.

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Copyright © 2017 by Eddie Brady..

ISBN:                   Softcover                               978-1-5434-5901-2

                            eBook                                     978-1-5434-5900-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction, except for the Hollywood characters noted. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental, except for the Hollywood characters named.

Readers of this book should feel free to offer any comments to the Author by e-mail at [e-mail].

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/25/2017

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Contents

Dedication

Adam and Eve

PART ONE

Chapter 1   The Doctor from Breslau

Chapter 2   Girls, Women and Nuns

Chapter 3   Hurricane Betty

Chapter 4   A Man Coping

Chapter 5   Women Power

Chapter 6   Argument on Father’s Day

Chapter 7   Road Justice

Chapter 8   A Voice Out Of The Past

Chapter 9   A Beautiful Dress

Chapter 10 Kicked in the Ball

PART TWO

Chapter 11 A Game a Woman Played

Chapter 12 Until Death Do Us Part

Chapter 13 Female and Male Brains - A Difference

Chapter 14 Regrets, I Have

Chapter 15 A Nun’s Habit

Chapter 16 Scandinavian Accusation

Chapter 17 Prize Winner

Chapter 18 Barrymore vs. Hepburn

Chapter 19 Games Alcoholics Play

Chapter 20 Finbar Mccool Speaks through the Reverand Elton Jones

PART THREE

Chapter 21 A Friend?

Chapter 22 The Honeymoon’s Over

Chapter 23 A Townie

Chapter 24 Spaghetti vs. Peanut Butter

Chapter 25 An International Incident

Chapter 26 A Bite Out of Switzerland

Chapter 27 Bad Breath

Chapter 28 Blind Date Disaster

Chapter 29 The Honeymooners

Chapter 30 Doctor Dumbo

PART FOUR

Chapter 31 How Men Differ from Women

Chapter 32 Opening Night

Chapter 33 Singled Out

Chapter 34 Movies vs. Books

Chapter 35 Heeling Memories

Chapter 36 Dating Misadventure

Chapter 37 The Spinster

Chapter 38 Trapped in the Shower

Chapter 39 Every Divorced Father’s Nightmare

Chapter 40 Femi-Nazis vs. Male Chauvinist Pigs

DEDICATION

T O THE STAFF and Seniors at the Jenks Senior Center for creating an environment where duty and responsibility are partnered alongside fun and frivolity, to our mutual benefit.

Winchester, MA USA

Erica Drazen, Winchester Seniors Association President

Jane Murray, Council of Aging Chairperson

Philip Beltz, Director

Nancy Polcari, Program Manager

Kathy Carr, Administrative Secretary

Sue Clark, Transportation Co-ordinator

Elaine Cesare-Smith, Nurse

Suzanne Norton, Social Worker

Ulla Slonicki, Administrative

Patti Santos, Senior Clerk

Nick Asaro, Facilities Manager

With special recognition to the learned literati who occupy the seats at the Three o’clock coffee meetings at The Round Table Sessions of the Jenks Café:

Anna LaViolette, Charlie DiMare, Fred Pacione, Mary Bezjak, Joseph Pacheco, Nick Asaro, John Day, Joseph Quigley and least of all, the Author.

And First among Equals, Co-Moderator of the Men’s Discussion Group, Bill Zettler and the author.

ADAM AND EVE

A CCORDING TO WIKIPEDIA, after God made the earth, the sun and the moon He made man. Then God supposedly took some clay from the ground, blew gently into it, breathed life into the substance and made man. The man’s eyes opened, he moved and came alive. God named him Adam. Thus Adam was the first man God created; God’s first miracle on Earth. Adam quickly got lonely and asked God for a companion. God says, Fine, but it will cost you an arm and a leg. Adam said, What can I get for a rib?

God then put Adam into a deep sleep, took one of his ribs and formed it into a woman. Adam named her Eve. She was to be Adams wife. You might say that creating Adam was the first splitting of the Adam.

Then Adam asked God, Why did you make such a beautiful woman? To get you interested. Why did you give her such a sweet personality? So you’d fall in love with her. Then why did you make her so dumb? So she’d fall in love with you."

Given that history, it is instructive to note that the First Commandment that God gives in the entire Bible is to Adam and Eve: Go forth and multiply. Is it not thus proselytizing and providential, as well as logical, that man and woman are destined to date and mate? And what of the celibate man or woman? Marriage is optional, so is celibacy.

Then the Lord made a beautiful garden within which they were to live. In the garden, God made an alluring tree that He called The Tree of Knowledge. This beatific creation of God was seeded with delicious looking apples. He seductively made the tree attractive to test Adam and Eve to see if they would obey the command of God not to eat the now forbidden fruit. It became then the word of God.

Enter Eve. Hungry and eyeing the delicious looking apples hanging from the fruitful tree, Eve desired to eat of the pulpy red fruit. Using her womanly charms that God gave her, she entreated Adam to join her in picking an apple from the low hanging fruit on the tree and biting into the mouthwatering, juice of a sweet apple. Adam, both hungry and succumbing to Eve’s wiles, quickly plucked an apple from the tree, handed one to Eve and both bit into the forbidden fruit, immediately enjoying its juicy, sweet taste. Temptation prevails. God is dismayed and ponders a just punishment for disobeying his command and thereby committing the Earth’s first sin. In the eyes of their God, Adam and Eve are now sinners, stained by earth’s temptation. Thus Woe unto man.

God deliberates and decides to cast Adam and Eve, now stained with Original Sin, out of the Garden of Eden. This retributive action from the hand of God condemns woman to make their way in this world by the sweat of their brows. Thus they are bound together to toil in the turbulent waters of this earthly world and similarly condemning the rest of the world’s descendants. So sayeth the Christian/Roman Catholic Bible.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

The Doctor from Breslau

S HE WAS A cardiologist and he was a lawyer. They were two single people from different backgrounds that were meeting for the first time. They were brought together by a commercial dating service that specialized in introducing couples to each other. The need they filled was facilitating social interactions for individuals who didn’t have time to socialize, because they were too busy working the long hours demanded by their professional lives.

That was the theory, anyway. All the participants wanted to believe that. It fed their egos, though reducing their bank accounts. Time was money and they had more money that time. The service was expensive, but isn’t your happiness worth it? The matchmaker piously asked. Well surely, we with the open checkbooks thought. But was it worth it? You can judge for yourself, at least in so far as this one experience can characterize anything. Take heed, enjoy the education and thank your luck that it didn’t happen to you.

We met at a popular sports bar in downtown Hartford, Connecticut. She worked at the Hartford Hospital and I worked at a large law firm in Hartford, thought to be the Insurance capital of the United States, because it then was the headquarters of fifty two insurance companies located in that metropolitan area. It was also called the small print capital of the world, because, well, have you ever tried to read an insurance policy? And this was at a time before the public and State Insurance Commissioners demanded that the insurance companies simplify the language in their patchwork automobile and home owner’s insurance policies.

Before the simplification, every time a law case punctured a hole in insurance wording, requiring claims to be paid not originally intended by the insurance underwriters, the risk selectors, they would patch up the hole with some twisted words that tortured the English language and kept their lawyers fully employed. This simpler language crusade was resisted for years by the insurance actuaries, the mathematics people, who studied probability statistics and data with their math formulas to measure what claims were likely to be paid against the insurance premium income, so they could make a reasonable profit.

The public had the moral high ground on this dispute, because the insurance companies began their business centuries before and were able to successfully able to price their products to earn a profit well before a sophisticated actuarial science was developed. If they could do it then, they could surely do it now. Thus the said insurance executives and actuaries had their heart palpitations and the word surgeons, the lawyers, were paid to redraft policies with simpler language. This was a happening in the nineteen seventies. So it was only natural that a cardiologist, whose bills were paid by insurance companies, should meet a lawyer, whose fees were paid by insurance companies, with this common interest between them. A natural, complementary union, right?

Wrong!

She was already at the U shaped restaurant bar when I arrived. I had been given a general description of her before I arrived, as she did of me. So it wasn’t too difficult to pick her out, especially since she was the only blonde woman sitting at the bar, though not the only woman. She sat tall on her seat, with a serious expression on her face, and nattily attired in a business suit. She wore little make up, highlighting her natural beauty. I was impressed, but she wasn’t. She happened to look up and saw me coming. I smiled; she didn’t. Not a good start, I thought.

Jennifer?

Yes. You’re late.

"You’re right, I said, looking at my watch. I’m three minutes late. Sorry."

I hope you don’t run your business this way.

Of course not, except this isn’t a business office, it’s a social occasion, is it not?

"For what I paid for this introduction, I see this as a business meeting."

"Then we can agree to disagree. That way we will have a meeting of the minds."

"Not with my mind."

Well then, why don’t we choose our weapons and have a duel?

What kind of a remark is that?

This conversation is getting ridiculous, isn’t it?

"Then let’s not waste any more time and start over."

Sounds good to me. What brought you to Hartford, if you don’t mind me asking?

When I graduated from Albert Einstein Medical School in New York City, and did my internship and residency programs, the best offer I received was here at the Hartford Hospital. So here I am. What about you?

When I graduated from the University of Connecticut Law School, I accepted a position in Hartford and still work as an attorney for a law firm that represents insurance company interests, including contracts and other civil, as opposed to criminal, matters. What got you interested in medicine?

She went on to say that she was Polish, but was born in Breslau, a large city in Eastern Germany in 1938. The next year, when her parents saw thousands of German Storm Troopers massing along the Polish Frontier, they decided to leave Germany and immigrated to the New York City area in the United States.

So for six of my first eight years we lived in Brooklyn. I entered the first grade there. My father was a professional singer. They called him the Polish Enrico Caruso, the famous Italian tenor. After the war ended, we moved back to Breslau. But due to the spoils of war, the Polish border was moved one hundred miles into East Germany and the Poles renamed Breslau, which was thereafter called Wroclaw, Poland. My parents were pleased about that, until we got there.

Why? What happened when you got there?

What do you think happened? The city was devastated by the war, that’s what!

She reacted impatiently and sounded indignant, giving me the impression that she thought my question was stupid. She had a rather imperious attitude, but had an interesting background, so I persevered.

"But didn’t they realize that before they went back?"

Obviously not. Communication then was chaotic and unreliable. They knew that the British and American bombers devastated Dresden in Germany, but didn’t fully appreciate how the Russians had damaged Breslau. It was a thriving, populous city before the start of World War Two.

That being so, what brought you back to the United States?

What do you think? My mother couldn’t take the starvation, crime and lack of housing. She got sick and ended up in the hospital, where she stayed for almost three years.

Three years! That must have been some sickness.

"It was, but it wasn’t just medical, as it was mental and emotional. She had a nervous breakdown. If I wanted to visit my mother, I had to go to the hospital. I was there so often, the nurses and doctors became my family in a way and the hospital became my second home. Later, going to medical school was, to me, like going home again."

"Where was your father?"

He abandoned us. I have no idea where he went or where he is today and I don’t care!

How did you like coming back to the New York City area in the US after living four years back in Breslau or rather Wroclaw, Poland.

At first, I didn’t like it. It was very traumatic.

How so?

When we got off the bus, there was a little boy at the bus stop and he had a machine gun in his hands and was pointing it at me. I was shocked!

But wasn’t it obvious that it was a toy?

Not to me. Not from where I just came from. Back there they were real!

Didn’t you think that some counseling would have helped you, as it did your mother, after those traumatic experiences?

What? Go see a psychiatrist? Those quacks! What good did they do her after the war? She was never the same and died of a heart attack the year I finished college at New York University. They’re not medical professionals. They’re still trying to figure out their own problems.

Even if that’s so in some cases, wouldn’t that give them some insight into those type problems?

Ha! You’ve got to be kidding. They’re just as likely to make it worse, as better. I’ll trust myself first.

There’s a saying in the law that: ‘A lawyer that represents himself has a fool for a client.’

That may be true in law, but not in medicine.

I was going to say that she was lucky she wasn’t a surgeon, but I decided to control my impulse and keep my own counsel. Instead, I changed the subject.

All my knowledge of the heart, you can put in a thimble. I’m just thankful that it beats as it should. Although I did have a heart scare recently.

What do you mean?

"I had chest pain, so I went to one of those Walk-in Medical Centers. A doctor there took an EKG and he shocked me by telling me that I had a heart attack! He referred me immediately to a Cardiologist at a local hospital and told me not to drive, but to take a cab. I was so stunned that I called my mother. I told her about this diagnosis and that it didn’t make any sense to me, as I had no heart history, was not overweight and ran road races up to half marathons. But my mother reminded me that I was not a medical doctor and should go see the Cardiologist, as referred. So I did. He also did an EKG. Then he put me on a treadmill and gradually increased the speed of the machine. After thirteen minutes of an intended fifteen minute exercise run, he shut down the machine.

Are you a runner? He asked.

Yes. I replied.

It shows. You have not had a heart attack. You have pleurisy, which can include chest pain.

I reported the results back to the Walk-in Medical Center and the referring doctor seemed somewhat chagrined, but commented defensively that in medical school they were taught that when you are fifty years old, as I turned the prior week, and there’s chest pain, a doctor should think heart attack. Besides they had used an old EKG machine that was useful, but not the latest state of the art machine.

Jennifer then jumped in with a machine gun series of questions as to whether the Cardiologist did this or that additional test or procedure, many of which I was not familiar with, so I couldn’t answer fully. But the bottom line was that I was now recovered and was fine, so I was grateful. However, she was very critical, almost contemptuous of both the walk-in Medical Center and the Cardiologist.

Again, I changed