Read Dear Digby for Free Online Page B

the heading SEXISM QUIZ.
1. You’re on vacation; who would you rather have as a scuba-diving partner?
    A. Dolly Parton
    B. Sandra Day O’Connor
    2. Let’s say God is a woman. How would the world be different?
    A. Churches would have no steeples.
    B. The Pope would have PMS.
    C. Orthodox Jews would thank God every morning they were not born God.
    3. Let’s say your boss is a woman; would you prefer her to have:
    A. Big breasts
    B. Small breasts
    C. Trick buttocks
    D. Joan Crawford shoulders
    4. Let’s say you have prostate trouble. Would you prefer to visit a woman surgeon who looked like:
    A. Madame Chiang Kai-shek
    B. Pat Nixon
    C. Tina Turner
    D. Sylvester Stallone
    At the end of the list of questions, W.I.T.C.H had this comment. “If your husband, lover, boyfriend has seriously tried to answer any of these questions, he is sexist to the bone. How could anyone with sensitivity to women even listen to these questions, ask yourself that!”
    I stopped reading. Print this? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lupé Reyes glide by the drinking fountain. She gave me a high sign; her hand flashed in the sun and I saw the ring with its big inset stone: bio-sign, eye inside.
    Lupé sidled over. She had on overalls, a bandana blouse, and a Walkman.
    “Pretty funny, huh? You wanted to print some extreme stuff. We’ve got more tests for your public to take, after this one.”
    I must have looked horrified, because she chucked me under the chin, then winked. “It’s all in fun, Willis,” she said.
    I smiled wanly at her. “It strikes me as a little hostile, you know?”
    “You don’t want to be hostile, do you, Willis?” She smiled back, her slow-developing smile, dug her finger into her temple and began to rapidly twist a long strand of dark curly hair. It looked like she was making the loco gesture at her own head.
    We stared at each other for a while. The hair, revolving, set up an orbit of tension that multiplied outside the sliding partitions: Someone sharpened a pencil, someone wrapped a package, winding the twine around and around; a tangled phone cord, dangling, unwound faster and faster.
    The hair stopped. “I don’t know,” Lupé said. “I don’t know about you, Digby. I mean, your sense of humor, I thought you were hip.”
    I narrowed my eyes and slouched a little in my chair: a honky editor trying to be hip. No luck. For years I’d applied an exotic rule of thumb that never failed me in determining instantly (in the right situation) if the woman I’d just met was destined to be a Real Friend. Could she sing “A Boy Like That” from West Side Story ? I mean, really sing it, the way Rita Moreno did and whoever was the dubbed-in voice for Natalie Wood—with accusing postures, gestures, a heavy Puerto Rican accent—the whole bit?
    A boy like that … will kill your brother.
    Forget that boy and find another!
    One of your own kind, stick to your own kind!
    A boy who kills cannot love.
    A boy who kills has no heart!
    And he’s the boy who gets your love,
    And gets your heart … very smart, Maria, very smart!
    Everybody knows “When You’re a Jet” and “Dear Officer Krupke”—only a real purist, a certain kind of obsessive spirit, will have the duet by heart, the crackpot intertwining arias of Anita and Maria. Try it, it never fails. Still, though I felt a terrible urge to do so, I found that I could not launch into Anita’s part, I mean really do the Spanish accent, with Lupé staring at me. Somehow, though I knew we liked each other, I doubted she would go with the flow here.
    Lupé drew me back. “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you? You’re afraid that I’m going to tell you some really horrible stories about myself, right?” She leaned closer. “Haven’t you heard the one about my father pimping me?”
    “I have.”
    “It’s true.”
    “Now what am I supposed to say?”
    “Hmmmmmm … what should you say? Do you think I oughta write a letter to you, give you a little more time to