ah, a fan letter from my paper carrier

[cellio]

I can't make this stuff up. Really.

I've been trying for a long time to get the newspaper carrier to fling the paper onto the porch, rather than into the bushes, into the street (that's not even trying), into incipient or actual puddles, etc. Recently he's been mostly hitting the sidewalk or steps, but when it rains the paper still gets soggy, 'cause those little plastic bags can only do so much. And in the winter finding it under the snow can be a challenge.

Wednesday it rained and I called for a replacement paper, explaining (again) that a paper on the porch would have been non-soggy, and is what I requested. Thursday my paper came with an annotation:

Let us look past the surface of this literary offering and cut straight to the chase.

Dear Paper Carrier,

You didn't give me your name or phone number, so I've had to respond through your district manager. I hope that's ok.

You objected to my failure to provide you a parking space in front of my house. I would like to note several things:

1. I park in my garage. Your attempt to guilt me into moving my car for your convenience was misguided.

2. I don't know who parks in front of my house. Actually, we've been wondering that for years (the red jeep is particularly puzzling), but that's beside the point. It's a public street. That means people park on it sometimes. They're allowed to; the city says so.

3. How exactly do you think I can provide you with a parking space? What do you want, a sign that says "no parking - reserved for lazy Tribune-Review guy"? I don't think your employer's public-relations department would like that very much.

4. So park a couple spots up if you have to. I've never seen the street completely full in the morning. You have other deliveries on this street; get off your butt and walk. And yes, I asked the dispatch folks if my carrier has physical limitations that interfere with delivery to my porch; you're perfectly capable of fulfilling my request according to them.

5. The porch is approximately 20 feet wide and about 30 feet back from the street. C'mon, even I can hit that, and I throw like a girl. Sheesh.

No, I didn't actually send it. I did phone in a complaint.

Comments

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

Newspapers land in my driveway, even though it's 'round the corner from my address. If they came there they'd never be seen. Fung shui? Die here. Back is front. And the news is still wet sometimes. If the throw is right, the open end lands downwards. Rain runs over, but not into it. Before I pick it up.

What does a girl throw like? Is it an overhand/underhand thing? Or just lack of muscle mass? Never did get that.

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

And I actually see my carrier sometimes. When I'm sitting outside somewhere between 0400 and 0530. It's not a habit or anything, but we wave to one another.

Throwing like a girl

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

It's a biology thing. A doctor can identify the gender of a shoulder X-ray. This is a *highly* simplified explanation, but men have a fully rotating ball and socket joint at the shoulder, while women have something like a flexible hinge.

As a sorta kinda illustration. Smack your fist into your other hand. That's a man's shoulder. Ball and socket. See how far you can move your elbows away from each other while keeping your fist in your other hand. A man can throw a strong right cross.

Now separate your hands, bring them together again and interlock your fingers. That's a woman's shoulder. Flexible hinge. You can still move your elbows away from each other but not as easily. A woman can throw a good right hook. And yeah, the lack of sheer muscle mass doesn't help them any either. :(

As I said, this is a *highly* simplified explanation, but it gets the point across. And teaching a woman martial arts is even more interesting. Women not only weigh less than men, but the weight distribution is completely different. Techniques that just don't work for a man can be highly effective for a woman... and vice versa.

Re: Throwing like a girl

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

I put a reasonable comment here, but apparently was thwarted. Damn and blast.

Re: Throwing like a girl

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

It's late. I hope this doesn't come across as snippy or condescending, but at close to 3am, I need to apologize in advance.

I've never heard that explanation about the shoulder differences before. This disturbed me since I'd taken a fair number of anatomy and physiology classes when I thought I wanted to be pre-med in college.

Being the nit-picky, pedantic, repository-of-useless-knowledge person that I am, I needed to follow this up with confiramtion.

With such a glaring gender difference in musculature and skeletal structure, it should have been mentioned somewhere -- even if I couldn't remember it -- and therefore it should be reasonably searchable. I didn't find a thing while searching terms like "shoulder", "gender", "diff*", "anat*", "male", "female", and so on, in various combinations.

Then I decided to drop back to the original issue of "throwing like a girl." I searched google on "'throwing like a girl' shoulder".

The first two hits required registrations. The third hit only hinted at the topic, but the fourth hit was paydirt:

http://www3.azwestern.edu/psy/dgershaw/lol/ThrowingGirl.html

No such shoulder difference exists. The doctor references the shoulder anatomy myth and follows it with a direct reference to Olympic Women's Softball.

There were other articles that indicate that minor differences in musculature and skeletal structure result in things like slightly more tucked and more flexible elbows in females, but I knew about those. These differences also don't add up to anything remotely like "throwing like a girl."

It's all about the difference in how men and women are taught to throw.

There was a fascinating anecdote about John Goodman (a righty) learning to throw left handed for playing the part of Babe Ruth. He clearly states that he practiced for quite some time before he stopped "throwing like a girl" with his left hand.

Re: Throwing like a girl

[glenbarnett.livejournal.com]

I agree with you apart from the "taught" thing. I was never taught to throw, and I guess many of the boys I grew up with weren't either.

When I was little, I just watched the kids who could throw, and practised until I could throw okay too.

But many girls can sure learn to throw, if they have a mind to, and someone to learn from, which indicates a general lack of a structural physical impediment.

In response to a couple of other posters - in my experience, more girls throw overarm than underarm, but don't generally do it in a mechanically effective way. The elbow seems to come into it too much, the arm is often too high - meaning that they tend to throw by contracting the triceps. The rest of the body needs to come in - power needs to come from the shoulder, chest and back acting in concert, from moving the bodyweight apropriately, and the arm "snap" - so you throw across your chest, not away from it (so if you want to throw hard, you step toward your target with your off foot, rathen than stand square on).

[siderea]

"Throw like a girl" == underhand, i.e. a lob.
e

[cellio]

I'm not acutally sure what the differences are. I was never actually taught to throw -- that's right, 11 years of mandatory phys-ed and they didn't even teach us that. I don't have a lot of distance or power; some of that's undoubtedly strength but I'll bet a lot of it is (lack of) technique.