White Knight

Of all of the things that periodically irritate me about being female, the biggest is probably the damsel in distress phenomenon. Most often, this occurs whenever I go to the gas station to put air in my tires. Random dudes catch a glimpse of me, air hose and pressure gauge in hand, and deduce from my capable handling of my own damn tires that I clearly must need help. It pisses me off to no end, whatever their intentions, because to me it conveys a totally caveman-ish attitude that the mere lack of a Y chromosome makes me incapable of handling something as simple as a tire refill. I'll add that the one and only time that I let a guy fill up my tires, because he was being annoying and I was in no mood to argue, he overfilled them, something that poor little helpless me wouldn't have done.

Anyway, gas station rant aside, the other day I posted an ad to sell the portable dishwasher, which I no longer need, on Craigslist. I got a response, set up an appointment, and a guy will be coming by this evening to pick up said dishwasher. Well, I told boyfriend this, expecting a simple response, and instead he tells me that I need to call maintenance and arrange for one of the guys to come hang out in the parking lot with me while the dishwasher transfer is made. Actually, first he told me to have one of them come chill in the basement with me, where the storage unit is located, but then I told him that I wasn't enough of an idiot to meet a stranger in the basement, so parking lot it is. This led to a bit of an argument. I'm not claiming that I was in the right by yelling at boyfriend that I was NOT a damsel in distress and perfectly capable of taking care of myself without a security detail, but...actually I'm claiming exactly that, minus the cranky yelling bit (I probably could've used a nicer tone of voice). But, because he's insistent and I'm incapable of saying "Okay honey" and then ignoring him, I called maintenance today. And arranged for dishwasher security. And now I feel like an asshole, because Bill from maintenance couldn't understand why I needed protecting either. He literally said "So what do you need me for?" after I informed him that I didn't need help hauling the dishwasher. Attempting to explain to someone that you need him to come hang out in a parking lot in the freezing cold for five minutes after his workday is over = really embarrassing conversation.

Oh well, at least boyfriend won't have to worry about my safety being compromised anymore, although I plan on whining about it just a little bit more, just to even the scales a touch.