filed in Daily Life
Do I Need an Hombre?
The wonderful woman who cleans my house was very upset as I arrived home today. She told me that the sliding glass door to the terrace was broken. Each of us got up on the stepladder and tried to fix it, but it was off the track and wouldn’t budge. She doesn’t know much English and I don’t know much Spanish, but we usually manage to communicate. Today, she kept repeating: Hombre, hombre, you need an hombre.
Illustration by Franco Matticchio
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6 comments for “Do I Need an Hombre?”
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What a sucker punch! Really hit me hard on the personal level for you and her assumption that a women couldn’t fix it. Clearly you needed help but that doesn’t mean only a man could help. My ex neighbor, a woman, helped me with many a similar problem. Ugh!!
Weird coincidence – a hefty man friend did happen to come over that day. He fixed it in a few minutes.
Hombre is Spanish for “handyman”. LOL
I’m very humbled to hear that.
I dunno …despite what her intention probably was in saying it, you could also just take it as an indication that you simply can’t do everything yourself. You have a cleaning lady after all. That doesn’t mean you yourself are personally lacking in some way, does it? And if you need someone with a particular skill (in this case maybe just brute strength) then so be it.
That’s not to say I myself wouldn’t still find the remark a bit frustrating.
Brute strength was needed. And that is simply not part of my skill set.