Dictaphones

There is an old joke that no one under the age of 70 gets: “Can I use your Dictaphone?”, and the guy answers back “Sure, but why don’t you use your finger like everyone else?” Oh how our parents and grandparents must have tittered. Now though, no one knows what a Dictaphone is, including me, so I looked it up. A Dictaphone is, according to https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › english › dictaphone a brand name[1] for a machine used in an office to record spoken words and later repeat them aloud. Nowadays you would call it voice-to-text, but back in the day it was a tape recorder that you used to play back to take dictation. Come to think of it, Louis Litt of the show “Suits” used a Dictaphone, so maybe it is still kinda cool.

But I digress.

The reason I am writing about Dictaphones and more importantly, the Dictaphone joke is because of all the people in this world that think that only men can do construction and/or use power tools, which implies that their male appendage is central to their use and mastery. Hence, the “dict” part of the Dictaphone. AS FAR AS I KNOW, there is no one in the construction arena who uses their “dict” to operate a power saw, biscuit joiner, electric screwdriver or a hammer. Unless we’ve all been doing it wrong.

After the myriad of projects my husband and I have done over the 20+ years of our marriage, including, but not limited to, building a house for our pigs out of cob (mud, straw, clay and water), renovating two cabins and a house, installing gardens, fencing, and moving enough garbage to the dump than one would care to move, mass removal of bamboo from our yard in Virginia, it’s my husband that gets all the credit, as if I sit around all day watching TikTok videos while he works. That is a luxury that we (and most women) do not have.

Still the bias continues. I once had a plumber tell my husband IN FRONT OF ME that “you cant have your wife help you, because it won’t work, you need a guy”. REALLY? Unfortunately, the Rent-a-Guy company went out of business in town, probably because his wife needed help carving out their Adirondack homestead.

One of the previous owners of our farm, when we came out to look at it for purchase, would not even address me. AT ALL. He kept asking Tim “Hey Tim, what do you think you’ll do with this cabin?” to which I asked, “Yeah Tim, what are you going to do with this cabin?”, like I was some annoying woman that followed him around. Further, the guy at Lowe’s, when I asked him about some feature of a power tool, only answered MY question to Tim. ERGO I’m pretty sure I am invisible.

So you’re right, I have not used a “dict” to construct fencing, or to maneuver the skid steer I was driving to deftly tear out a half an acre of bamboo, and you know what? NEITHER HAS ANYONE ELSE. So don’t be a “dict” and give us women some friggin’ credit.

[1] By Alexander Graham Bell’s Volta laboratory!