This is yet another post on the subject of the year of real life experience (RLE), which is usually required before surgery. My most recent prior post on this topic was Response 3.
The most terrifying moments in my RLE were dealing with men: specifically, the hardware store and the auto repair shop.
I live in Virginia, in a single-family house. The land around the house itself has things like grass and shrubbery growing; no surprise there. Because we own, not rent, the maintenance falls on us. We contract out the lawn mowing, which I always hated anyway, but there are still things like fallen leaves, clogged gutters, pruning, and so on.
And then there are the niggling little tasks like dripping faucet washers. I really hate to pay $150 for a plumber to come out and replace a 35-cent faucet washer which I could easily replace myself. The problem comes in buying it.
The big, big home repair retailers like Lowe’s or Home Depot — as well as the little hardware store on the corner — are willing to provide provide help selecting the right item. They are terrible, though, at reading minds: you have to ask someone.
Two features of my life potentially pose problems:
I know too much. I’ve done plumbing, electrical, roof repair, gutters, painting, even cement work — all when I was younger, of course, and long before I started taking estrogen. Yes, of course, women can know about these things, but the ones that do are seldom as feminine as I work at being. So here’s me, in pink, wearing lipstick and earrings, asking about faucet washers and knowing way, way more about faucet washers than a woman as feminine as I ought to know. And I have a rough, low voice.
That took some getting used to, and some swallowing of pride. If you want to pull it off, you can’t argue with the advice you get, even if you know it’s dead wrong. So if you ask for advice, but you don’t want to take the advice you’re given by someone who knows less than you, then you either give yourself away or you learn to be discrete and to smile a lot.
My state, Virginia, has annual vehicle inspections, so there was no way to avoid dealing with auto mechanics at least once a year. In my 20’s I used to be a mechanic, and I did a lot of my own repairs even into my 40’s, so car repair is another area in which I have to finesse a conversation.
My year of RLE was my year to face those terrors. If you’re not living full time, then you can let the hard things go till you’re in boy mode again: let your male self deal with the mechanic. That’s exactly the sort of situation that RLE is supposed to make you confront.
Please don’t cheat yourself on your RLE. Don’t shorten it, and don’t cheat by jumping back to boy mode to deal with a specific situation.