Today there were three motions addressed in our Spokesmen’s Club meeting. All of these motions dealt with a related set of concerns involving our final club meeting. Our original plan had been to have a shared ladies’ brunch (as we did last year) with the Salem and Eugene clubs, at a location of their choosing on the only possible date that would work for everyone, May 18th. For a variety of reasons, including the scarcity of venues, they were unable to come up with a venue and we had reserved an option for the hotel where we met the last couple of years for the meeting for ourselves if no joint meeting site could be found. As it happened, the combined three motions stated that we would postpone the ladies’ brunch portion to next year and that we would attempt to meet on May 18th at our normal location, but if our normal site was not available we would not have any meeting at all. Given the fact that there are seven people who have not paid any portion of this year’s dues [1], there were some people who were concerned, justifiably so, about the amount of money we had to pay for a ladies’ night, even if some of them were partly responsible for that situation themselves.

What bothered me about the proceedings and discussion was not the decision, which was one that I was okay with and mostly supported (at least 2/3 of the resolutions involved), but about the way in which people defended their points and justified their perspective. At least a couple of the people made jokes about their wives being at a women’s retreat in Spokane on the day that we had the ladies’ brunch planned. Given this reality, they joked about how difficult it was to find dates at the last minute, and so they thought that their difficulty in finding a lady to go with should mean that the club as a whole should not have a ladies’ night on that date, which meant that it could not be done at all. I can certainly empathize, more than most people would realize, with the difficulty of finding dates to ladies’ brunches and other similar events. It is not as if there is a large amount of suitable and interested and available people to go out with, after all, a fact I am constantly aware of.

I suppose that it would be hard for people who have been married for decades to be particularly empathetic to the plight of a rather prickly single man. Most of the time, people take for granted what they have and when they are temporarily without it at an inconvenient time, are not particularly aware that their flippant attempts at humor are likely to cause offense to others because what for them is a temporary and minor inconvenience is a frequently unpleasant and occasionally harrowing aspect of my life. To put this sort of joke into context, last year I had a very difficult time finding a date to the ladies’ brunch [2]. I asked three different people, and all of them agreed conditionally, but the first one was forbidden by parents so fiercely that it ended up being a matter of ministerial concern and the other two ended up being busy and unable to come. Given the sensitivity I have about dates and courting and anything involving young women in general, I find it rather cruel when other people view it as a subject of sport without any awareness of the difficulty that such matters cause others. And though I would not wish for ladies’ night to be canceled simply because it is hard for me to find a lady to go with me, I can understand how others would not think it is appropriate for there to be a ladies’ night when a few husbands cannot attend with their wives, because I am generally more sensitive to the situations of others than they are to me. Such is the life, though, I suppose.

[1] See, for example: https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/treasurers-report/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/asleep-at-last/