When you are in sixth grade (or these days, maybe second grade), you and the other girls in your class are asked to report to the library one afternoon for the infamous “becoming a woman” discussion. In the darkened library, and speaking in hushed tones, you are given the talk about the ways that women are different from men. You may remember it as being funny, or embarrassing. You certainly don’t see it as a particularly critical event in your maturation. But as you get older, you understand that it was around this time that “boys and girls” became “the boys” and “the girls” — two separate groups not only with different anatomy, but also with different roles to play in life. You enter the library a girl and leave the library a woman, now knowing all there is to know about the specific role you will play in your life as a female.

Fast forward a decade or two, during which you start to live the dream, which is, in many circles (not all), to get married, buy a house, have a child. Maybe not in that order, but eventually you find yourself a married woman with a house and a child. And you play your role well. You strategically place your wedding invitation and photo in a prominent spot in your living room. You buy the appropriate educational toys for your child’s development. You carefully select curtains, lamps, lampshades, wreaths and candles that reflect your personality and status as woman of the house. You go to Michael’s craft store for holiday decorations, which include the requisite scarecrow and bale of hay in the fall, and the bird feeder and potted plants in the spring. At Michael’s, you pass countless other women roaming the isles searching for the perfect wicker basket. The library staff may not have included all of these details in “the talk”, but it’s clear that you are a full-fledged woman, a card-carrying member of the estrogen club.

Then one day as you’re rearranging your curtains, you hear a noise from the basement or the attic. It might be a busted hot water heater, or some mice, or a leak in the roof. So you call your husband in a panic, who in turn calls a guy out of the phone book. You let your husband handle it because you’re too busy sorting out your Michael’s purchases. You don’t really like talking to crazy contractors on the phone. And this home maintenance business is the man’s domain, isn’t it?

But then time goes by and more appliances start to malfunction. Although you call your husband, he’s busy in a meeting, so you have to make the calls to the plumber and the exterminator and the roofer yourself. And every time you make one of these phone calls, a voice on the other end of the line picks up and snarls “Yeah, whaddya need?”  And you stammer, “Please, sir, I would really appreciate it if you could come by and take a look at my washing machine. It’s filling up with water and it won’t stop. There’s water all over the floor. Do you think you could come by sometime within the next month, if it’s not too much of an inconvenience? I’ll pay you whatever you ask.”

As time goes by and you keep making these types of calls, you start to think the lesson in the library hasn’t really helped you keep your house functioning. You realize that sometimes it helps to throw a few key phrases around like “It isn’t working properly” or “You didn’t fix this” or “I don’t think I can pay you until this is completed”. The more you use these phrases, the more you start sounding like a man. The more crass and aggressive you are, the more you seem to get things fixed around the house. In fact, you find your voice getting deeper and sounding more Tony Soprano’s every day.

Then, on a particularly hot day, you realize that your central air conditioning system is not working. You call an expert in HVAC systems who comes to your house to fix it. Only this knucklehead doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s incompetent and dishonest, and it’s taking him three days to figure out the problem with the air conditioner. Through the years, you’ve learned enough about HVAC systems (and the other appliances in the house) to school him on compressors, refrigerant and air handlers.

In a perfect world, you’d have a team of very masculine people to handle this for you. But your husband is away on business and you’re not wealthy enough to have people. All you have are your wreaths from Michael’s. Unfortunately for you, the wreaths are not keeping you from sweating to death while you sleep in a room with no air conditioning during a freak heat wave in April.

It is at this moment that you decide growing a set of balls is the only option for you. You need a healthy dose of testosterone to get you through this landmine-infested road called “dealing with contractors”.  It’s a good thing that library session in sixth grade included a short segment on male development — you’re going to need those set of balls fast. And you’re definitely going to need to know how to bust them for every contractor that comes through your house from this point forward.

Once this happens, you’ll be saying key phrases like “It’ ain’t working” and “Stop bullshitting me” and “I’m not paying you a dime” and “Get the hell out of my house.” It is at this point in your life when you realize that becoming a woman has little to do with the wreaths and everything to do with growing a set of balls.

You don’t think you’re ever going to make it back to Michael’s.

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