Dear Diary: Hoof in Mouth

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It’s not that I’m cowering in shame, paralysed by the indelible memory of having said something truly stupid (or worse). No. But I am almost allergric, this evening, to the sound of my own voice.

It was a nice day. Still exhausted from the weekend, and feeling entitled, by yesterday’s steady work, to refrain from bounding out of bed the moment I woke up, I progressed in a leisurely fashion to the computer, stopping in the kitchen to boil water for Kathleen’s matutinal tea and toast, when boom: I remembered that I’d made a date to be at the Museum this morning at 10:30.

If I weren’t, just for the moment (I hope), tired of hearing myself talk, I’d tell you about it. I console myself for my silence with the thought that nothing very interesting or unusual happened. At two o’clock, I bid my friends au revoir and said that I must get back to work. I made two stops on Madison Avenue and one on Lex. I was back at work before four. By the time Kathleen got home, shortly before ten, the pizza and the zucchini sticks were still warm enough to be tasty.

Reading about the failure of the ERA’s ratification in Gail Collins’s wonderful book is more dispiriting than I can say. Like Betty Friedan, I should like to have burned Phyllis Schlafly at the stake — although drawing and quartering might have more certainly wiped the smirk off that woman’s face.  Collins’s account is valiant and fair, but I was overwhelmed by hatred all the same. The worst thing about hating someone like Phyllis Schlafly is the mirror principle: your hate is reflected right back, to the extent that the object of your hatred is looking back. Someone hates you — or at least what you believe.  One of the two of you ought to pack up and leave for the New World. But there are no more New Worlds.

As I said, I’m sick of the sound of my own voice. Which I take as a compliment.