How (a)typical

So it's just another regular evening at our house. We all -- Partner, his bff-since-school DocPal and me -- are in the lounge ('drawing') room except for Mia, who is asleep in her cot. We hope the baby would continue sleeping while the men watch footy and I read Tina Fey's biography Bossypants.

The men do the usual man-thing of discussing some stat (they are not so sure about) and abusing some umpire (they are very sure about). Sometimes though they look away from the TV screen long enough to stare at me. There are many points in the book that make me laugh out loud. I am stared at during those points. "You are a freak," they declare, Partner loudly and DocPal tacitly because he does not deny it either. Sometimes I read out bits from the book while laughing out loud, they stare at me harder.

At one point I have to stop reading. Tina has just written about some of her male colleagues pissing in various cups and keeping these cups randomly sitting about the office. Some of her other male colleagues -- another department, lower hierarchy perhaps since they didn't get their own cup -- have been communally pissing in a jar. Having worked in the media, I was quite struck by this. I tried to think of any time I might have seen any of my male editor's, various techie or other colleagues ever sitting around suspicious-looking styrofoam cups. The only cups I had noticed were the once that were supposed to be coffee but were actually rum-and-coke-during-night-shift.

Anyway. So I interrupt the boys and ask, "Have you ever pissed in a cup because you didn't want to go to the toilet?" Boys look at each other.

Partner says, "Geez, not in a cupppp, more like a Gatorade bottle."

I am disgusted and turn to DocPal -- who is a doctor afterall -- looking for some support, some signs that he too is similarly disgusted.

DocPal to Partner, "Did you fill the bottle?"

So why am I the freak?

PS: Bossypants, totally read it. I loved the bits about her childhood and starting out in television. The bits about her at Saturday Night Live were somewhat boring. And then I really fell for her when she spoke about motherhood etc. Sometimes it feels like she is really honest, at other times there's a bit of that's-bullshit-Tina but overall worth a read.