A couple of weeks ago I woke up thinking about a man who is not my husband. He’s someone I went out with over a decade ago and there was no reason he should have popped into my head, except: Dr. Jill Biden.
The night before, with my children safely asleep and my husband in the living room, unwinding with some incredibly stressful show about a.) deep space b.) escaping near-death circumstances or c.) prison, I decided to do a little doom-scrolling before bed. While scanning Twitter I noticed the first shouts of scorn—some chump had written a Wall Street Journal op-ed urging Dr. Jill to drop the Dr. since she earned the title by way of a PhD, not an MD. (Naturally, said chump has neither.) I wormed my way around the paywall—and I wonder why journalism is a dying field—to read the op-ed, rage-snorted a few times, and fell asleep.
When I woke up the next morning, I had somehow relived that so-called date in my sleep. I was marinating in memories of that time, when I was running around New York with a gaggle of great friends who had nothing but our wit and each other to protect us from the slings, arrows, and not-so-helpful advice of men who were all too eager to tell us what we should and shouldn’t be doing in order to make them more comfortable. Those guys were mansplaining before it was a verb, and all we could do was laugh.
I started writing in notes mode on my phone (something I NEVER do), then switched to my laptop in the still quiet hours while the rest of the house slept. And I downloaded those memories into this call-and-response op-ed essay which ran on oprahmag.com. I meant to repost as a blog sooner, but I’ve been busy with my current-day life, so here it is now! Thanks to Dr. Jill for reminding me of great friends, long-gone times, and the bestseller I never wrote.
To read the essay, click here.
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