Close-up considerations.
Everything we do is based on rational decisions or rational thinking.
Palmistry is a mere party trick.
It’s easier to interpret a person’s character by his hand than to predict his future.
Visiting fortune-tellers is worthless.
A lot of people are rather sceptical about astrology.
Unit Ten
Open-up ldeas
Though people hate being ill they love being nursed and so may make a three-day cold last a good week.
No one can have a really worthwhile illness and a good appetite.
Most men are hypochondriacs – sufferers from imaginary illnesses.
Women nursing men perform the act of sacrifice – a special role of a fairy Godmother.
Text for discussion
I hate being ill, I do not simply mean that I dislike the illness itself (although that is true), but I hate what being ill does to my character. As soon as I have a headache or a cold or the first signs of the flu coming on, I proceed to behave as if I were in the grip of some fatal illness, and to wear an expression of martyrdom which is supposed to indicate that I will bravely face the few days of life that are left to me. The fact is that I have developed into a fine art the ability to feel sorry for myself, and, which is more important, to wring sympathy out of the women who surround me. I love being nursed and fussed over, and I make a three-day cold last a good week by a combination of carefully produced and well-timed groans and grimaces. Of course, being a man I have to show that I suffer my pain bravely, but I make it quite clear that I am nonetheless suffering I suffer beautifully, I am really good at it, and I can melt the hardest female heart the minute I show symptoms of, for instance, migraine – even though I am probably suffering from nothing more serious than a hangover.
The first thing you must do is to deny that you are suffering, because they will be reluctant to give you any sympathy if they think that that is what you are after. But at the same time that you deny you are ill, you must furrow your brow and clutch the part of you that is in agony to show that the pain is overwhelming you in spite of your efforts to put on a brave front. Once you are into your pyjamas and your bed, the battle is as good as won. Do it, at first, ask for anything: you do not want to be a bother to anyone, you are prepared to lie there alone and suffering in silence until the end comes? Under no circumstances should you ask for food: nobody can have a really worthwhile illness and an appetite. In no time at all, they are all over you, full of concern and caresses, stroking your brow and destroying themselves in an attempt to restore you to health.
Most men are naturally good at this sort of thing, and will exploit a minor illness to good effect. But men are not hypochondriacs – sufferers from imaginary illness – as most women assert. The fact is that most men are fully aware that they are performing a valuable social service by making out that they are more ill than they really are. You see, women love illness. They do not on the whole like to be ill themselves, although they will occasionally take to their beds on some flimsy pretext, just to make sure that they are not being taken completely for granted. No, a wife actually likes her husband to be ill from time to time so that she can show off her talents as a n amateur Florence Nightingale. It is the spirit of noble self-sacrifice that really fulfils her.
In this she is encouraged by all the television commercials she sees which show a calm, caring mother-wife figure mopping fevered brows, administering patent medicines, preparing soothing potions, and generally behaving like a ministering angel. And when she shakes the thermometer before prodding it into your unprotesting mouth … well, you would think it was a magic wand and she a fairy godmother! This is the role they see themselves in, and we poor men, so far from being the exploiting ‘male chauvinist pigs’ of contemporary mythology are in fact the exploited victims of their fantasies.
Still, as I said before, it is nice to be ill once you get the hang of it. If, in addition, you want to make your loved one happy, keep her awake night after night with your moans and groans and your requests for hot drinks and cold compresses. And, for her, there is a bonus: when you are better and back at work, think of all the pleasure she is going to get out of telling the neighbours about the hell she has been through.