Once there was young lady in college who flew home for Christmas vacation. Her mother picked her up at the airport, and so they had a very good talk on the drive back to her home, which was a couple hours away. The thing that the young lady really wanted to unburden her soul about was the behavior of her roommate, who was, not to put too fine a point on it, driving her crazy.
“Mom, she’s a parrot—but a really competitive one. I can’t do anything without her copying me, and trying to copy me first, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t exactly,” her mother said.
“Well, I bought a really cute dress to wear to a banquet we were having. I showed it to her when I got it home—should have known better—and so she went out and bought the same exact dress.”
“Oh, no,” her mother said.
“Wait, it gets worse. She didn’t tell me she had gotten it, and then she just showed up at another event we had the night before, when she knew the stores were closed, and that I couldn’t go get another dress for the next night. She didn’t exactly say neener neener, but her head was tilted at exactly the right angle for saying it.”
Her mother kept her eye on the road in silent sympathy.
Her daughter continued, “What am I supposed to do about this? My residual supplies of holiness are about used up.”
“There are two reasons why you don’t really need to do anything.”
“Well, I would honestly be happy to hear them. I hope they are compelling and obvious to me, and not some form of zen Presbyterianism.”
“The first thing is that feminism, far from liberating women to compete with men on a level playing field, has actually resulted in a removal of many ancient constraints that provided protection for women—protection from one another. Feminism has not liberated women to get in there to race with the big dogs. But it has succeeded in multiplying the cat fights. Women don’t compete with men. But they can be prevailed upon to compete with other women, in the presence of men, for the approval of men, or for the men themselves.”
Her daughter nodded. “Yeah, that last part really makes sense. She blew up at me last week because she thought John likes me . . .”
“John? Who’s John?”
Her daughter laughed. “That’s a subject for you and dad together. What’s the second reason I don’t need to do anything?”
“What your roommate is doing is absolutely invisible to her. Trying to explain it, or having a heart to heart talk with her, will only make things worse. But everyone who knows the two of you together will see it plainly—in fact, more plainly than even you see it. You don’t need to explain anything to any of them. In fact, you could have worn the same dress the following night, and nobody would have thought that you were the copy cat.”
“What do I do then?”
“Just love on her.”