Evolution is Misogynist

April 28

After twenty years of not doing so, I’ve rung up and make an appointment to see a doctor. An Anomaly has developed and it’s time to find out what it is.

I first noticed this last November. I lay down on the floor to stare out the dog, and something – something – was there beneath me. At the time I leapt up again with uncharacteristic nimbleness and thought OMG – I can’t be! But what about all that indigestion I’d had trouble with a couple of months earlier? Isn’t that a sign? But then, regular periods… you wouldn’t have those… But, then, there are bizarre random cases when you do…

In December I took a pregnancy test. I am paranoid about things – I’ve ‘seen’ ghosts, I’ve ‘seen’ UFOs, I couldn’t be left in the house alone at night – until we got the dog – because the nightworld outside bristled with burglars and axe murderers. So I was probably imagining this too. It’s like (and this is how I ‘saw’ a UFO) when you’re noticing something very ordinary for the first time and in its new clarity it looks strange and terrifying. And when the pregnancy test was negative, I thought two things. 1: I’m being irrational and paranoid. 2: I did the test thing wrong. Anyway, I left it again.

I’m at a funny age, I reasoned, the age of medical things. It’s a proof of and a problem with Evolution: it’s quite a conservative process. Often by the time adaptations have evolved, the environmental conditions giving rise to them have moved on again. So you are stuck at the age of 40 with reproductive organs that start to go a bit mad, as – even a couple of hundred years ago – your best years were far behind you at that age. If you are a woman. Maybe Evolution is just misogynist?

I’ve never had a doctor in Dunedin, after twenty years of not doing so, I’ve rung up and make an appointment to see a doctor. She’ll assure me it’s natural for women my age to worry about things and all I need to do is shed the pounds (after all, I live on a hill – it can’t be too hard), do a smear thing, send me on my way.

And it costs fifty bucks.