Ah The way I see it if strangers are fair game so are the buggers that have to put up with me 
I am always most abject in apology.
Fuckin’ A, calm kiwi!
Sorry, it had to be said.
I’ve run out of gas twice in the counts quickly almost 4 years I’ve been driving. The first time was on my second tank of gas - I’d been told by my mother not to fill the tank until the gas light came on, so I’d get better milage. So, I dutifully waited for the light to come on… and waited… and waited… (did I mention that the car was 10 years old when we bought it?) and I noticed that the car was kind of acting funny when I accelerated from a stop, but didn’t think of it… until I ran out of gas on the freeway between my home and my work. Thankfully, I managed to coast to the bottom of an off-ramp, and hitched a ride with a couple little old ladies coming from Palm Sunday services to the gas station, 4 miles or so down the road. Yeah, you’ll never guess which dashboard light didn’t work in my car.
Considering how I treated that car, it’s a wonder I only ran out of gas once more. I’d been putting it off all week until I had money in my bank account, and was actually heading to the gas station when the car stopped. I decided not to call AAA, because it wasn’t much of a walk to the station and my car was safe in a parking lot. I proceeded to buy a little red plastic gas can, filled it with gas, walked back with it… and it didn’t work. Somehow, the spout on the can wasn’t long enough to reach into my tank. With the help of a bank patron, I managed to make a funnel out of a piece of cardboard and a wire hanger, and we got enough gas in the tank for me to make it to the station.
As you might’ve guessed from those above stories, I never knew that driving your car down to the last drop could damage anything. I mean, sure, I got vauge warnings from my mom that it wasn’t good to drive the car low, but my mother has also cautioned me against sleeping with wet hair, lest I catch cold. I’ll try to do better from now on.
You’d never know it from here, but catsix has indoor plumbing.
Hell, if I had the same kind of relationship she talked about, in which my wife held every little thing above my head for years but I let huge mistakes on her part drop immediately–I might hate women, too. Thank god my wife and I cut each other slack, don’t try to teach each other lessons, don’t cuss each other out in arguments, and generally try to help each other along.
I don’t really see that men and women communicate all that differently, but I can definitely see how thinking that might impede one’s ability to communicate.
Daniel
Because a good man should bite his tongue and let every argument be an automatic win for the woman?
Don’t think so. And by the way, I’m not a ‘he’.
Is that due to the fact that they were the ones who said that no matter how much at fault the wife was for what happened, that she shouldn’t have to accept responsibility for it?
This is the way that I learned it works. No matter what the facts or the argument, the man always loses. If he defends himself, or presents the facts, it’s a whole new argument in which he is an ‘asshole’ for not considering the woman’s feelings.
In all the relationships around me, it’s been like this:
“For an argument between a man and a woman…the woman always has the last word…anything the man says after that is the beginning of a new argument”
My mother and grandmother attempted to raise me to believe that the man is always wrong, no matter what. I lived through the ‘If you don’t know what you did wrong I’m not going to tell you’ crap. All it taught me is that momsix will never take responsibility for anything, and that dadsix has a TV in the garage for a really good reason. That and all the bumper stickers, buttons and t-shirts that crack jokes at the expense of men have taught me that society deems it acceptable to be sexist against men - something that my vocal stance against has gotten me called a woman-hater, a man posing as a woman, etc. Movies, TV and my life itself have taught me that a lot of women expect that no matter what the facts of the argument, the man better be the one apologizing. This bothers me.
Bullshit. Bullshit bullshit bullshit. I knew you were a little unhinged about feminism; I didn’t realize your reading comprehension sucked so bad.
Like I said: if I’d grown up seeing such bad relationships, I might hate women, too.
Daniel
My reading comprehension is uncluttered by anti-male sexism. I manage to notice when a man is being told to just shut up because a woman’s precious little feelings can’t handle being wrong once in a while.
Refusing to accept sexism against men is not ‘hatred of women’. Unless of course you think feminism (which supposedly is the refusal to accept sexism against women) is ‘hatred of men’ by the same token.
You do manage to notice that, I’ll grant you that. You manage to notice that even when it’s not at all what’s being said.
That’s true, but consistently misrepresenting women and painting them with a very large brush sure looks like hatred of women to me.
Daniel
That is what was said. Spare her having to go into the dealership herself. Pay the money for her. Then lie to her and tell her they ‘fixed’ something that was broken just so that her ego suffers no damage. Because otherwise the OP is ‘creating animosity’.
It sure looks like another example of ‘man must be wrong to spare woman’s feelings.’
Being honest about sexist behavior that comes from women is not ‘misrepresenting’ them. I’ve told you where my impression comes from, and I have applied it to this case because it sounds very familiar. There are lots of other threads on this forum regarding arguments between men and women where I don’t say a damn thing.
But of course, every time I do, I get to look forward to you telling me what a woman hater I am. It’s one of those reassuring consistencies.
Not what I said. Wanna quote otherwise?
And your wonderful ability to read things that weren’t written ensures that you’ll never be disappointed. Given that this is the first thread in which I’ve ever written that you hate women, we can see it’s more of the same.
Your attitudes all seem to spring from a single unshakeable delusion.
Daniel
Actually, it was an attempt to defuse a situation which seemed to be spiralling out of control over a truly minor incident. The question of gender never entered my mind.
I had planned to stay out of this thread, because I felt I’d made my point sufficiently. Obviously I was wrong. My point is gleefully sailing into the wild blue yonder, having buzzed well over your head.
There are times in every relationship when both members should forget “being right” and concentrate instead on ending the argument. Your twisted interpretation of my advice/remarks bears no resemblance to what I actually wrote or meant.
Crapola. Let that be a lesson to me to not assume one’s gender based solely on one’s gender-bashing remarks. My apologies, catsix. And my sympathies, also, for the unhealthy relationship advice passed on to you by your mother and grandmother. Weren’t they ever setting you up for disaster?
And again, what Sauron said.
Hey, Sauron, FWIW, your message wasn’t lost on all of us. 
buttonjockey not all women are like your wife. I find that “men are logical, women are emotional” atitude patronizing. I think that, no matter how women think, if they are wrong, then they are wrong. The less you put up with now, the less you will have to deal with later. Within reason, of course, sometimes there is a compromise to be reached. In this situation, however, it just looks to me like she threw a tantrum and was pampered.
First, let me say that I get a bit panicky if my car even gets to 1/4 of a tank so I always fill up before that. Now my question. I hear over and over that it’s “bad for the car” to let it get below 1/4 of a tank or so. Why? It’s still gas right? What is it about the last bit of gas that is bad for the car?
The perception of pampering notwithstanding, here’s a possible scenario:
Mrs. buttonjockey, aware that she made an expensive booboo and proceeded to cover up her initial embarassment with righteous indignitation, realizes that she was completely an ass and resolves to learn from her mistake. On top of that, she has even more respect for Mr. buttonjockey that he allowed her her transgressions and moved on. Why? She figures that he realizes she’s an intelligent person who, like anyone, makes dumb mistakes and also that saving face sometimes makes one behave poorly. She is secure in the knowledge that Mr. buttonjockey values peace in their relationship over winning the argument.
The result:
- Mrs. buttonjockey heeds Mr. buttonjockey’s warnings and never runs out of gas again (or does, but handles it herself to avoid repetition of above).
- Mr. buttonjockey never has to be bothered with the inconvenience again and is secure in the knowledge that his wife knows what to do if the event reoccurs.
- The relationship is stronger because they didn’t fight to the death over $86. (What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?)
Surely, there are other scenarios, but this is one a distinct possibility (one with which I’m personally familiar) and should be considered. It’s win-win.
I don’t know why y’all piling on catsix for. She’s stated several times that it was HER experience growing up. I never really got the idea from her posts that she was saying all women get the free fuckup pass, cause they don’t.
I too, have seen princessy women get the free fuckup pass. I, however, am not one of them.
And while it’s all well and good that buttonjockey allowed his wife this pass (and thus saved his marriage and we can all walk off into the sunset and live happily ever after despite the cheesy music they play during closing credits), mostly EVERYONE concurred that she was WAY out of line, to the point of a childish tantrum.
It’s up to him if he wanted to take that shit.
If it were me, I sure as hell wouldn’t have. What would anyone have to gain by lying… to enable her to continue unacceptable behavior? 
I get along better with men than both of them do because after years of listening to them and realizing that both dadsix and grandpasix would rather be anywhere but in the same room as them, it was a great lesson in what not to do.
It’s the whole ‘holiday’ thing now, and dadsix is as usual, hiding either in the garage or the boat house because momsix is pulling her ‘you can’t do anything right’ crap. He offered to help, and she brought up the goddamn roast self-cleaning again, so he high tailed it somewhere safe.
I think it’s because I have this anti-feminist, woman-hater reputation around here. I grew up with princessy women who held the attitude that the woman always has the last word, always wins the argument, and that everything the man does is wrong. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard dadsix apologize for some imaginary thing because momsix was throwing a hissy fit. So yes, if I were buttonjockey, I can’t imagine giving a free pass for the fact that he was screamed at and now has to go and deal with the dealership to spare his wife’s feelings.
Obviously he’s free to make his own decisions about that, whether I understand them or not. All I’m saying here is that I don’t understand what is to be gained by bailing her out in going to get the car and pay for the tow/gas and then lying and saying they ‘fixed’ something. Maybe in other people’s lives it’d work differently, but in my own experience it’d mean the car runs out of gas again and further damage is done.
My sister is another of those princessy types. When her and I both bought cars, dadsix advised us both to get a portable cigarette-lighter air pump that can fill a tire in case we ran over a nail or something. Then we could put air in the tire to get to a garage and have it fixed. I got one at the auto parts store for 20$. My sister did not.
The parentsixs’ house is in a new construction area, so there are a lot of nails. One day, I picked up a nail in the tire and did not realize it until I came out to the car much later while at work and the tire was flat. I pulled out my air pump, filled it, and went to get it fixed.
Sistersix picked up a nail in her tire a couple of months later, and noticed it while leaving her grad school class at the college. She had no air pump, so she called dadsix and made him come and get her (because she does not know how to open the trunk and use the donut), which he was none too happy about because this was later in the evening (around 9 pm) and he had to be up around 4 am. She chewed him out for taking a half hour to get to her college, then chewed him out because he told her that he’d put on the spare and that the next day she would have to go to the garage and get it fixed. She chewed him out again the next day after coming back from the garage because she’d had to go there. You know what two things she still doesn’t have? Yup. Portable air pump and knowledge of how to change a tire. Because she learned that she can bitch and scream at daddysix and he’ll bail her out.
Naturally my opinion of what happens when one person bails another one out on a regular basis comes from personal experience, which all my life has been that the bailer does the work and the bailee learns nothing.
It’s also not entirely gender related, as my cousin (male) learned not one fucking thing about taking care of himself because my grandmasix and auntsix bailed him out of every jam he ever had, while he whined and bitched and swore and screamed at them.
It may not appear that way unless you consider the years of personal experience that I have relating to ‘sparing feelings’ and ‘bailing out’ someone else. I’m glad your life experience was different.
Holy cow, catsix. I’ve never seen a family dynamic like you’ve described.
I guess I can sort of understand where you’re coming from now, but I can assure you that the type of bailing out/lack of understanding scenarios you’re describing aren’t common. At least, not in my experience.
Just … wow.
There is NO way any of my sisters would act like that. :eek:
Did you ever chew her out for that?