June 2024 Flash Lit 6.2 - Pear

“It feels sexist,” Barbara said.  “And pretentious.”

“I never know what you’re mad about,” Dave said.

 

“That’s because you never let me finish,” Barbara said.

 

As she was opening her mouth to go on, Dave asked, “Do you ever finish?”

 

“Don’t get me started on that,” she said.  “Five minutes might be enough for you…”

 

Then she realized she’d been distracted from her original point.  She tugged at her sleeves, straightened her bracelets, and got back to it.  “What I was saying is that when you say something has gone pear-shaped, it sounds, to me, both sexist and pretentious.”

 

Dave took a swig of his beer to fortify himself for what came next.  He was not going to encourage Barbara by gesture or sound because she was going to roll on, inevitable, like the tide.

 

“It’s sexist because women are the ones who are pear-shaped.  When you use the idiom as meaning disaster, you’re implying that disaster is a woman,” Barbara said.

 

Dave thought:  you are a woman and a disaster, so I have at least one data point.

 

“And pretentious,” she went on, “because I know you learned it from your highbrow British murder mysteries.  You’re from Fresno, Dave, not London.”

 

“Ah, yes, that extremely esoteric and academic tendency I have to read pop fiction,” Dave sneered.  “Pretentious is reading Dostoyevsky or Joyce, not whodunits, no matter where they were written.”

 

Dave swallowed the last of his beer.  “I’m going home since the evening has clearly gone pear-shaped.  You coming?”

 

“Bastard,” she said, but she went.