A roomful of assumptions

Who first came up with “assume makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’”, I wonder?  Did they feel smug as they made the connection?  Did they hug themselves with barely-contained glee, anticipating the oohs and ahhs that would surely emanate from the boardroom come Monday?  They must have done, because whenever anyone says “assume makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’, it’s always with a tiny shiver of glee, like they came up with it all by themselves.  Bless ’em.

That thought came to me because of an event I went to last week (for work, mind), held in a fancy hotel function room.  The event was for menopausal women.  I’ve noticed that people make a lot of assumptions about menopausal women.  Even menopausal women.  We’re permanently hot and sweaty.  We’re gradually losing our minds.  Our clothes are straining at the seams. We don’t sleep well.  Our bosses don’t understand us, and neither do our husbands.  But how can they, when we don’t understand ourselves anymore!

(Help, etc.)

I’m 48, so granted, I’m in the catchment area for menopause symptoms.  But I don’t want people to assume, as they did at this event, that I suffer from the whole sorry lot.  Or that I wanted to make silly jokes about brain fog and sweaty faces.  Or that they know my life, just because I’m 48 (though one kind soul in spindly too-high heels assumed I was, like her, “a woman over 50”).

“We all know what it’s like, don’t we ladies?” cooed a plump, flowery-smocked woman who was event-presenting. “Menopause hits us just as the kids are growing up… and then we find ourselves looking after our ageing parents as well. It’s just not fair.”

(This woman was flogging “science-backed” menopause supplements.  None of their marketing materials mentioned any actual science, which somewhat begged the question, “what science?  The science of meat?  The science of pain?  The science of blessed hope?).

It was the “we all know what it’s like…” that got me.  Because not all of us do.  I don’t.  I haven’t got kids, and I haven’t got parents who need their bums wiping by someone else (yet).  It’s not just menopause, either; at a recent women-only networking event, the presenter there stood up and trilled, “Now, we’re all working mums here, so naturally we know how tough it is to combine business with kids…”

When I go to events like these, I can’t help wondering if I matter.  And do I still need menopause supplements?   I suppose everyone else in that fancy hotel function room would think my life is way too fair to need “science-backed” support.

But then, that’s an assumption.  And assume makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’.