Plumbers Girl Quotes

I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were entirely transactional: 'We're out of milk again.' (I'll get some today.) 'I need this ironed properly.' (I'll do that today.) 'How hard is it to buy milk?' (Silence.) 'You forgot to call the plumber.' (Sigh.) 'Goddammit, put on your coat, right now, and go out and get some goddamn milk. Now.' These messages and orders brought to you by my father, a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee.

Sports contained the truth, I decided, the unspoken truth (how quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound), and it seemed hard to believe that I had never understood this before. They rewarded effortlessness and unself-consciousness; they confirmed that yes, there are rankings of skill and value and that everyone knows what they are (seeing those guys who were subbed with two seconds left before the end of a quarter, I’d think how girls’ coaches were never that heartless); they showed that the best things in the world to be were young and strong and fast. To play a great game of high school basketball-it was something I myself had never done, but I could tell-made you know what it was to be alive. How much in an adult life can compare to that? Granted, there are margaritas, or there’s no homework, but there are also puffy white bagels under neon lights in the conference room, there’s waiting for the plumber, making small talk with your boring neighbor.

This is 1987. A girl can be whatever she wants to be." "I know," said Ray. "My mums a plumber.

But housewives were still complaining about the Servant Problem long after servants had gone the way of the mastodon. I had rarely met a housewife who did not have a touch of slaveholder in her; they seemed to think there really ought to be strapping peasant girls grateful for a chance to scrub floors fourteen hours a day and eat table scraps at wages a plumber’s helper would scorn.

You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?” “No, indeed!” “You’ll be interested to hear that I’m engaged.” “My dear fellow! I congrat----” “To Milverton’s housemaid.” “Good heavens, Holmes!” “I wanted information, Watson.” “Surely you have gone too far?” “It was a most necessary step. I am a plumber with a rising business, Escott, by name. I have walked out with her each evening, and I have talked with her. Good heavens, those talks! However, I have got all I wanted. I know Milverton’s house as I know the palm of my hand.” “But the girl, Holmes?” He shrugged his shoulders. “You can’t help it, my dear Watson. You must play your cards as best you can when such a stake is on the table. However, I rejoice to say that I have a hated rival, who will certainly cut me out the instant that my back is turned. What a splendid night it is!

Housemothers are all things to the girls—we’re therapists; we’re friends; we’re nurses; we’re short-order cooks; we’re tailors. Sometimes, we’re even plumbers.

But mining is also an intellectual exercise, requiring the combined skills of a plumber, a carpenter, and an electrician as well as an explosives expert. You had to be able to judge the load strength of a beam or the friability of rock at a glance and do instant calculations in your head, because one false step or misplaced stick of dynamite could blow you into body parts or at least send a few digits flying off on their own. So this was the mental procedure, which even a little girl could learn: First, size up the situation. Make sure you have all the facts, and nothing but the facts—no folklore, no conventional wisdom, no lazy assumptions. Then examine the facts for patterns and connections. Make a prediction. See if it works. And if it doesn’t work, start all over again.

for that matter, were any of the people of the little world of Polk Street. The shop girls, the plumbers’ apprentices, the small tradespeople, and their like, whose social position was not clearly defined, could never be sure how far they could go and yet preserve their “respectability.” When they wished to be “proper,” they invariably overdid the thing. It was not as if they belonged to the “tough” element, who had no appearances to keep up. Polk Street rubbed elbows with the “avenue” one block above. There were certain limits which its dwellers could not overstep; but unfortunately for them, these limits were poorly defined. They could never be sure of themselves. At an unguarded moment they might be taken for “toughs,” so they generally erred in the other direction, and were absurdly formal. No people have a keener eye for the amenities than those whose social position is not assured.

However one felt about the Mummers, guys like Franny infused South Philadelphia with a hint of the carnivalesque. Any bulky white man on the street—plumber, roofer, carpenter, cop—might abruptly slide into a swoop or a twirl, buoyant and sleek as a synchronized swimmer. He might prance like a reindeer, lurch like a tyrannosaur, pulse like a rave girl in a festival crowd. He would strut one minute and complain about Mexicans the next.

Why must women be continually surprised that their male partners disappoint them? That we feel a distinct lack of support, or that the support we receive is both patronizing and conditional: I will applaud your job, your vision, your goals, if you continue to uphold your domestic duties. Cook the dinners, change the diapers, clean the house, and then you can have your “fun.” Why do women, natural sharers, natural empathizers, yoke themselves to men, who are by their own nature nonreflective, nonverbal, noncommunicative? Why do women, natural nurturers, find themselves hollowed out as years of marriage pass, having drained themselves of emotions that continually are fed to partners who have no interest in reciprocating? Partners who tend to say the same damning words, meant as praise: She knows how to handle me. As if a woman’s primary duty was to use all her brains and empathy to manage a man, as if she were some plumber of the psyche. Or how about this one, which men often say when praising a relationship: It’s just easy. Would a man say this about his job? Certainly not. But the key relationship in his life? He shouldn’t have to work at it. That’s because the woman is spending all her time trying to figure him out, trying to handle him. And she wonders why she is so confused about her own emotions: She has no time to ponder them. This sad situation is not the fault of men any more than it is the fault of women. The two are simply incompatible beings.