I feel as though I am in a

meat market, being sized up and down. I shouldn't feel this insecure,

yet it is shocking as I walk past and all the women seem to stare and

secretly glance at what I have. I feel so cheap and disrespected as a

person as I wander my way through. Are we not human beings anymore?

As I stand shyly, some woman

makes eye contact with me and starts to approach. I start to play with

my wedding band, hoping she will move past me, but she doesn't. Her lips

part and she says, "You come here often?"

Before I can speak, she uses

a line on me I'm sure few have heard before, "Which do you find more

appealing, a carbide-tip rip saw or a steel-hardened crosscut blade.?"

Too shy to answer, I make my

escape. I hear her call as I walk away, "But you didn't even let

me ask about router bits." Such is the life for the 21st century

Home Depot shopper.

Use to be, shopping for construction

supplies was a man thing. In the old days, a woman didn't know the difference

between a monkey wrench and a hack saw. Now I find myself asking the fairer

sex their opinions on the pros and cons of oil-based paint as opposed

to latex.

I am not a Darwinian, but it

seems females are evolving at a faster pace than us men. I have not been

hanging out at Michael's Craft Supply lately and I don't have any desire

to peruse Bath and Body Works anytime soon. Yet, hardware and automotive

stores are hardly bastions of mono-gender sanctuary anymore.

I guess the new evolution hit

its stride about the time "that" woman fired the first shot

on the Citadel and brought down the all-male college. Even though the

battle was trenchant, resistance was futile and eventually the fort fell

into enemy hands. But what nice hands they are.

It is funny how motives are

different for men and women. If a woman tries to break tradition, it is

for her whole species, for the sake of the long term. For a man to seek

out becoming the only of his gender among women, it is simply to increase

his odds for sex. As a matter of fact, a man would not even want any other

men following after. If I could have gotten into Agnes Scott College,

I would have nailed the doors shut behind me.

Home Depots are cropping up

faster than Russell Crowe scandals and this is because of women. They

are a valid shopping demographic. And as men see this as an infiltration

of their turf, some would say women don't even give it a second thought

nor recognize it as a battle. Maybe it's a competition with only one insecure

team playing. But maybe, just maybe, it's like the stone-faced poker player

who already knows he's going to win and just doesn't want to tip his hand.

Women could never be that calculating, could they?

I expect that one day the earth

will be like those '60s B-flicks like "Amazon Women on Planet Z,"

where the women rule the planet and men are nothing more than slaves,

used only for the sake of reproduction. But then again, I guess that would

mean we both just got what we both wanted after all.

[Visit Billy Murphy on the

Internet at https://ebilly.net.]