R-E-S-P-E-C-T? Equal pay? The right to bear arms in combat? The total demise and end of man’s dominion and power over you? You should be careful what you ask for you know, but fine. Stop the world! I want to get off. You don’t want to live in a male-dominated world; I don’t want to live in a female-dominated world.
The trend that’s disturbing me lately is the one where you younger married women either refuse to take your husband’s last name or you hyphenate it with your maiden name. I realize this seems quite practical since at least 50% of you will wind up divorced.
But now I’m seeing this REALLY disturbing trend where many of you women are insisting that your children take your maiden name rather than their father’s name. Again, this seems quite practical if you are a single parent, but if you’re married - that’s just wrong.
On the other hand, I confess I sometimes wish I went by my mother’s maiden name - Tonoli. I coulda’ been Jimmy Tonoli. Cool huh? Doesn’t that name conjure up an image of a famous actor or restaurateur or a godfather-type of guy? I adored my mother’s parents and Tonoli has a lot better ring to it than Perkins. Besides, Perkins wasn’t my original last name. I never knew my real father, but when I was a teenager I was adopted by my stepfather and became a Perkins. Now, no disrespect to my stepfather, but Perkins is so common, almost as common as Smith, whereas Tonoli - well, you don’t hear that name very often do you? Bada bing!
What if a guy wants his male offspring to carry on his family name though? In my case I have no male offspring, so that’s kind of a moot point, and I have accepted this situation because I figure that’s the way God wants it and so be it. But I can understand a guy wanting someone to carry on his family name. Still, I never believed in going around boffing beaucoup women just to sire an heir, especially a male heir, with my last name. I know guys who’ve wound up with seven kids, 10 kids, 13 kids, just trying to sire a male heir. How do they pay all that child support? I worked with a guy years ago who killed himself because he had sired so many kids and divorced so many wives, the child welfare people were at his door every payday with their hands out. Hey, but if you are paying child support shouldn’t your kid at least have your last name; seems like there should be some compensation for child support.
You younger women, especially, like to complain about men being afraid of commitment. But who can blame us? All we really want, as I have tried to explain before, is to roam the earth casting our seed where we may and not taking responsibility for it and you want to have power and control over us.
We’d like our kids to have our last names because that could be our only claim to our 15 minutes of fame. As far as I’m concerned though, it doesn’t matter if my last name is Perkins or Pussywillow. I still am who I am and my last name doesn’t change that. Right Sam?
No comments:
Post a Comment