Women have worked towards equality with men for centuries. There is obviously still a ways to go. But it’s difficult for young women of today to imagine what it was like in, say, the 1950s and early 60s. I’m not saying women lived like slaves, but it really was hard for women to compete with men for jobs and pay, for example. And that was only one aspect of life where women were considered less important than men. Even those women who stayed at home and took care of their family were not really supported for their efforts.

I was born in 1953, and graduated from high school in 1972. I obviously saw a lot of serious challenges and social changes including the Civil Right Movement and the Women’s Movement. While I wasn’t marching in rallies or burning my bra, I was right there in spirit with the women who were on the front lines so that I would be fairly treated when I was out in the real world looking for a job.

One of the inequities that women came up against was the fact that their names were given different prefixes depending on their marital status. We were Miss if we were unmarried and Mrs. if we had walked down the aisle and said I do. On the other hand, men were Mr. no matter their marital status. What did this mean in practical terms? It meant that while a Mr. was a Mr. was a Mr., a woman’s title told everyone something that was probably none of their business, at least not when it came to getting selected for a job.

In the early 60s, a woman named Sheila Michaels attempted to popularize the term Ms. for all women. Her fight went on for years, until it started getting some feet in the early 1970s. Gloria Steinem perhaps made the term permanent with her new magazine which she called  Ms. Magazine, first published in 1972.

For my part, I remember thinking I would NEVER go by that silly name. Ms. Nor would I be called a womyn which was something else that was proposed and thankfully never caught on.

By the way, while researching this topic, I learned that the term Ms. as a title for women was first proposed in 1901 by another magazine —  The Republican of Springfield, MA. Its purpose at that time was to prevent embarrassment for probably mostly men who were unsure of a woman’s marital status and didn’t know how to address her.

Anyway, over the years the term Ms. became commonplace, especially as more and more women didn’t take their husbands’ names upon marriage. In another aside, when I first married in 1977, in order to keep my maiden name after marriage, I would have had to have it legally changed BACK to that name. Times have changed markedly in that regard.

I’m old and pretty set in my ways, but this all came back to me when I saw a recent photo on Facebook. My niece Brooke is an elementary school teacher. She posted a photo that the school took of her and her fellow teachers, with their names. What I noticed is that if the teacher was married, they were referred to as Mrs. If they were not married, they were referred to as Ms.

And this thought occurred to me: Did changing Miss/Mrs. to Ms. ever really make a difference?

Yesterday afternoon, Bill and I made a Costco run. On the way home, we stopped at an ATM outside of our bank. (This post is riveting so far, isn’t it?) Anyhoo, as we drove home, Bill commented that the ATM gave him two fifty dollar bills as part of his cash. He was somewhat disgruntled, as I always am when that happens to me, because the fact is that many places won’t take a bill larger than a twenty.

“Well, as the daughter of a small business owner, I understand why they hate large bills,” I said. “Small businesses covet their ones and fives and tens so that they can give change to the bulk of their customers.”

But it got me to thinking how the retail world has changed so much. I’m not even talking about the fact that so many people shop online these days instead of making their way to their nearest Macy’s or Old Navy. What I AM talking about is the fact that most of us pay with credit cards instead of cash.

Actually, that isn’t fair for me to say, because I’ve done absolutely no research on how people pay for goods. I’m basing that on me, me, me alone. I almost never pay for anything with cash. It’s the points I earn from my credit card company, donchaknow. I use them for Christmas shopping.

I’m also banking it on the fact that I have literally seen cashiers look like a deer in the headlights on the rare occasions that I hand them bills for my purchase. They are simply stumped. I’ve gotten past my former disappointment that the vast majority of young retail workers would be unable to make change if the cash register didn’t tell them exactly how much change they should hand to their customer. Time moves on, my friends. Cursive is no longer necessary because exactly no one hand writes a single thing. Adding and subtracting in your head is becoming old-fashioned as well, because who doesn’t have a calculator on the phone they indubitably have.

And I’m showing my own old-fashionedness by using the word indubitably instead of undoubtedly. You’ve got to dig in your heels at some point.

I learned two specific things from my mother as she trained me to work in the front end of the bakery. Well, I learned many, many things, but here are two that have always stuck in my mind: I learned how to make change in my head without use of a calculator. I could even figure out how to give change if the total came to, say,  $8.27 and they gave me a ten dollar bill and two pennies. The second thing I learned was that your bills always face the same direction. I think it had something to do with making it easier and safer to count out bills. All I know is very often, even if I get my cash handed to me by a bank teller, the bills are all facing different directions.

As an aside, I wonder if anyone besides grocery stores even keep coins in their cash registers? I learned from my boss at my old Safeway job that you never open a tube of coins until the very last coin is gone. That way you don’t end up with a cash register of pennies. Pennies. You know, those things you see laying on the ground because they’re worth so little no one bothers to pick them up. Except me.

As for Bill’s problem, the answer is simple. Don’t get $200 cash at an ATM. Get $175. No fifties!

Linked to Grand Social.

When Bill and I went on our big adventure in Europe in 2008, we drove over 6,000 miles in the three months we traveled. We drove through six countries — Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and Austria. And believe me, when I say “we”, I mean Bill, because he drove every single solitary mile of the trip. I simply pointed out everything he was doing wrong.

We had some interesting experiences, including what we coined “the wall of death” in Italy whereby the cement blocks dividing the lanes going one direction from the lanes going the other direction were literally inches from the side of the car as we drove. We were on the autobahn where cars raced past us going who knows how many kilometers per hour, passing us like we were standing still. There were inexplicable road traffic signs and roads so narrow that two people could barely pass one another when walking, much less driving.

Still, the driving didn’t bother Bill nearly as much as did driving in Great Britain some 15 years earlier. He did pretty well in Britain, all things considered; still, I don’t think he ever quite got comfortable navigating the roads which were opposite of what he was used to. As you well know, In Great Britain, you drive on the left side of the road and on the right side of the car. In other words, what my dad would call Ass Backwards. It took everything Bill had to make himself look right before he looked left.

I’m terrifically tuned into which side of the car the steering wheel is placed now that I am binge-watching Midsommer Murders. As many times as I have watched (I’m on Season 12), I still want to scream at the chief detective inspector to tell him that he is heading to the wrong side of the car when he is in a hurry to chase a bad guy.

The other day I began wondering why Americans drive on the right side of the road rather than the left like their British friends. Were we just determined to do things differently than our friends across the pond? Did our forefathers drive their buggies on the right side just to piss off the Redcoats? So I looked it up because you can find anything on the internet.

To my surprise, the answer is that at one time, almost everybody rode on the left side of the road. However, the reason for this was that people were on horseback, and they wanted to have their weapon handy to protect themselves. Because most people were (and are) right-handed, that meant that the horses and riders would ride on the left side, keeping their weapons in their right hands. Tough luck for the lefties.

Years passed, and suddenly it was the 1700s. People now drove horse-drawn wagons. In the beginning, there were no drivers’ seats in the wagons, and drivers sat on the left horse, freeing his right hand to hold the whip. Since he was on the left side, others passed the wagons on the left. I’m not sure why; maybe so they could flip off the driver for moving so slowly. Early road rage.

As such, most countries made the change for good. Since Great Britain still has their barristers and solicitors and judges wear powder wigs, it comes as no surprise that they have been reluctant to make this change. And likely never will.

By the way, I saved Bill’s life when we were walking in London. He looked to the left and began walking. I pulled him back to the curb as a car raced by from the right.

I know I posted this photo earlier this week, but I can’t help it: This is the thing that made me smile the most this week…..

And given who he is, it came as no surprise that his circle was perfectly round, as though he’d used a compass. Love that man.

Have a great weekend.