Anger Management

Raoul’s 2 Cents for May 7, 2026

Four Ladies and Me

If you don’t want to ponder, move on to the Jokes below.

Last week, my wife had a board retreat in Palm Springs so I tagged along. Most of the time, when I join my wife’s work activities, I just stay in our hotel room. You see, I’m not really into traveling and I don’t really care for the long rides — be it on a boat, or in a float … in a train, or on a plane … on a van or on a tram … I do not like them, Sam I am! Nope, hate wasting my time like that. I can’t wait for Elon Musk to invent a teleportation machine and say — “beam me up Scotty!” But we are not there yet. This time I rode a tramway to the top of the world with four sweet ladies.

These ladies were the wives of the other board members who, like me, had nothing better to do. They invited me to join them ride the famous Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. So famous in fact, I had never heard of it. Although the tram is one of those slow modes of transportation, I did accept the invitation and I did enjoy their company.

As I sat in the SUV, I recalled the many occasions I had been the only male surrounded by women. I dunno, they’re comfortable with me and I’m comfortable with them. And, remarkably, it’s usually four of them. I grew up with four sisters — maybe that’s why. But being comfortable wasn’t always the case. I used to be an introvert … especially when it came to women.

GROWING UP IN AN ALL-BOYS SCHOOL
In Grade School, boys were supposed to hate girls. Remember that? Boys were not supposed to be interested in girly things. But that changed dramatically when we hit the puberty years in High School. Those were the crazy years. We fought for independence and coolness. The rebellious ones started smoking and drinking. Suddenly I (and the rest of my pimpled classmates) started noticing the other gender. As a whole, we were truly ignorant of the female species. We didn’t know what they were interested in. How did you start a conversation? Surely they liked basketball and boxing and Kung Fu movies, right?

This is how innocent we were: I remember planning for our first dance party. Yup! We were going to meet the “enemy.” We didn’t know how to dance so the weekend before, we decided to practice. Naturally, nobody knew how. However, my best friend, Fernando, came up with this weird dance move where we created an imaginary square and where we stepped on the edges of the square in a clockwise motion and just wiggled our arms around. We thought that was better than nothing. You should have seen us in the actual dance floor counting 1-2-3-4 … 1-2-3-4 … like robots. I think the girls thought it was a new dance craze.

First year of college was exciting. For the first time, we were going to school with these mysterious creatures. Many of the girls had similarly come from all-girl schools so both sexes were discovering the other. You could have seen the hormones flying. And this was the first time I found myself with 4 women friends. I don’t know how it happened but it did. They were the pretty “mean girls” and I was the token boy. There was no romance. We just enjoyed hanging out. I have long lost my connection with any of them. In later years I’ve had similar clumps of women friends — also without any romance. And I have no idea where they are now. Do you know of any other groups like mine? Was this common?

BACK TO THE PRESENT
You would think that with all my “extensive experience” with women friends, that I’d be an expert in understanding these creatures but no. Women are still as unpredictable as ever. In fact, I just recently lost a dear friend because of something I said. Not even sure what I said but it hurt her deeply. Instead of helping, I made things worse. Some “expert,” right? (Or is this not a guy and gal thing but a “people” thing?) One of the problems is men want women to be more like men and women want men to be more like women. And, when men treat women like men, they find out they should have treated them like women. Confused? Well, so am I.

It’s Mother’s Day this coming Sunday. To all you mothers out there (in behalf of all of the men) thank you for putting up with us. We may not understand you and you may drive us crazy but you did a heck of a job raising our kids (better than we could have alone) and you make the world fun and exciting!

TGIF people!

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QUOTES OF THE WEEK

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” — Genesis 1:27

“Men are like a fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and it’s our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you’d like to have dinner with.” — Jill Shalvis

“When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.” — Elayne Boosler

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.” — Joseph Conrad

“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” — Genesis 2:18

“However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” — Ephesians 5:33

JOKE OF THE WEEK

Thanks to Joe of Los Angeles, CA

MEMES of the Week

Thanks to James of Los Angeles

Thanks to Kathy of North Dakota

Thanks to Art of Sierra Madre, California

Thanks to Norm of Encino, California

Thanks to Barbara of Pasadena, California

I found these:

My good friend (and jokester) Terry and I came up with these:

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