I talked to my sister the other day, and she mentioned her friend Elveen. Now I’ve got the Laverne & Shirley theme song stuck in my head.
Name that Segway!
My sister said her friend’s name: Elveen.
Or was it Elveena? Elvira?
Elvira, ba oom poppa, omm poppa, mow mow
Elvira Ba oom poppa, omm poppa, mow mow
<< repeat ad nauseum until bedtime; resume immediately upon awaking the next day>>
Elvi… GRRR. I’ve got to get this song out of my head!
Think of something else.
What else does “Elveen” sound like?
Elve. Leave. Laverne.
Laverne and Shirley.
Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!
Good news: Elvira is no longer stuck in my head.
Bad news: Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
If you followed all of those references, congratulations on being old, like me. You young’uns out there
probably didn’t follow that. I’m sure you’ve heard of Happy Days, but maybe not it’s lesser known
counter-part, Laverne and Shirley. To catch you up, it was a sit-com made in the 70’s about a couple of women living in the late 50’s who were not doing things the traditional way. You see, they were young single women, sharing an apartment in Milwaukee. Without husbands. Or parents.
Now, you young’uns might be thinking, “so what?”, but remember, we’re talking about the late 50s here. Women were expected to graduate from high school, get married, have babies, and greet their husbands at the door every night in fresh lipstick. They went from living with their parents to living with their husbands, with nothing in between. So these two ladies, living the single life, were totally bucking the trend. Not that they didn’t want husbands – there were plenty of story lines that showed us that they very much did. But the point of the show was to demonstrate that they didn’t NEED them.
It got eclipsed by Happy Days, no surprise given the political climate of the late 70s. It was the height of the feminist movement, and not everyone was a fan. There were plenty of people out there who wanted to bury their heads in the sand, resisting all forward momentum, and keep women where they belonged: at home, raising the kids and cooking the meatloaf. So though Laverne and Shirley was a smash hit, it never gained quite the same popularity as the male-led Happy Days.
I’ve been on the road for two days now, so I’ve had a lot of time to think about Laverne and Shirley, and what they represented. They were breaking new ground by highlighting women’s independence, a precursor to the likes of Two Broke Girls and Thelma & Louise. And, in a way, they helped pave the way for my current adventure.
In the 70’s, there was lots of talk about women being able to do pretty much anything a man could do. But that thought process took a while to take hold. In the early 80s, I was driving a motorcycle, and it was a head-turner. Look, honey. A girl on a motorcycle!
We’ve come a long way since then. Seeing a lone woman riding a motorcycle isn’t anything to write home about any more. There are plenty of women working in traditionally male-dominated roles, like truck drivers and fire fighters. And some women, like me, have decided that there is no reason why they shouldn’t hop in an RV and skip town for a month.
But how enlightened are we, really?
The reactions from other women when I tell them what I’m doing are fairly predictable. It’s either, “Oh cool, sound like fun!”, or “Oh, I could NEVER do that.”
Really? In 2021, you could NEVER drive an RV and spend a month living in it alone?
It bothers me a bit to hear women say that. If you’re one of those women, can I suggest a slight alteration in your thought process? Rather than saying, “I could never do that”, how about saying, “I would never do that”. Subtle difference, right? But important.
You see, there is no male-specific anatomy that’s used to drive an RV. So therefore, if you can drive a car, you can do exactly what I’ve done. You’re capable of it. I’m not saying you have to do it, or even that you should. I’m only saying that you CAN.
I hate the thought that the old 50’s mentality still limits us, as women. Among my friends and acquaintances who have a motorhome or camper-trailer, it’s almost always the husband who drives, while the wife is the navigator. I watch a lot of You Tube videos about RVers, and in almost all of those, it’s the husband who drives and the woman who navigates. Not that the women can’t drive the RV, but most would prefer not to. Even women who are younger than me, who have always lived in the post-feminist era, have a reluctance to embrace this traditional male role. Why?
I’ve come to the conclusion that we all tend to lean in the Laverne direction or in the Shirley direction. Let me explain.
Shirley was the more traditional of the two women. If I had to guess, I’d say that Shirley went on to get married, pop out 3 or 4 adorable munchkins who were always impeccably dressed and impeccably polite, she’d have a killer meatloaf which she served once a week, and she’d always, ALWAYS meet her man at the door with fresh lipstick.
Laverne on the other hand, would have gone a different route in my head. I still image she’d get married (it was the 50s/60s, after all). But she would have spent her days rough-housing with her rambunctious kids. She’d routinely put grilled cheese on the table for dinner. And she’d have met her husband at the door and handed him a poopy baby so that she could go play catch in the yard with the older kids.
If Shirley and her husband had an RV, he’d drive and she’d navigate.
Laverne, on the other hand, would do her share of the driving.
No judgement here. Both women were being true to themselves. Shirley’s nature led her to find fulfillment in the traditional leave-it-to-beaver life style. Laverne’s nature led her on a more modern path. But it seems that our society still has more Shirley’s than Laverne’s, at least when it comes to rv-ing.
If you’d asked me, back when Laverne and Shirley was on the air, which of the women I’d end up being more like, I’d have been sure it was Shirley. But to my surprise, it turns out that I’m a Laverne. I’m not nostalgic for old times. I don’t have any interest in following a traditional path. I loved raising kids, but I also love my independence. There’s room for both in my life.
Here’s the thing that we should take away from the old sit-com, in my humble opinion: push your boundaries!
Although I think Shirley probably ended up on a very traditional path, I’ll bet she enjoyed that lifestyle more because of those years of doing crazy things with Laverne. She learned that she was a capable, competent woman who could stand on her own two feet, who could take whatever life threw at her and keep on keepin’ on. That had to have affected her satisfaction with her life choices, right? She didn’t just fall into them. She chose them, knowing fully well what she was trading them in for. I feel like those experiences had to have made for a richer life for her.
Pushing our boundaries is scary and stressful and often a hassle. But the flip side is that we grow. Just like mothers teach their kids to play simple games like Candy Land because they know that winning builds self-confidence, when we push past our boundaries and “win” in our endeavors, we are making deposits into our own self-confidence piggy banks.
When I left for this trip, I was a bundle of nerves on the first couple of days. But crap happened, and I handled it. Now, on the return trip, I am much more relaxed and confident. I know that more crap is going to come up, and, in fact, some minor tire drama came up this morning. Notice that I said “Minor”. On the trip down, that tire incident might have been an entire blog post, all by itself. But today, it was just a little blip in the road. I handled it. Problem solved.
So, sistahs, I hope that you will consider pushing some of your own boundaries. When you catch yourself thinking, “I could NEVER do that”, challenge that thought. Ask yourself, if you really wanted to, if it was something that you very much wanted to do, could you make it happen? Would it be fair to say that doing the thing is not impossible, it would simply make you uncomfortable? Would pushing past your discomfort be worth the rewards? It certainly was for me this time around. I’m throwing down the gauntlet for you, my loyal readers. In 2021, push through one of your “can’ts”, change it to a “could”, and maybe even a “did”. Life is short. Carpe diem.
Much love,
Kimba
© Kimberlee Martin, 2021. All rights reserved.
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