As I’m sure that I’ve mentioned before, when my husband and I started on our genealogical journey there was little to nothing available digitally. That meant taking vacation time to go places to find the information we were looking for. So that’s what we did. Lucky for us in the beginning, our search didn’t take us too far, only to southern Germany. We knew the language and how to read a map, so we were good to go. Let the road trip begin!
The beauty of actually travelling to different places was that we got to meet a multitude of people. Not surprising because my husband’s ancestors were Catholic, the majority of people we were dealing with were church people and men. If we did talk to a woman and she had to talk to her superiors, it was inevitably a man. Not that dealing with men is bad, no, not at all. But some things happened that I just don’t think would have happened if the person we had contact with had been a woman.
Men and machines
I fully appreciate that working a photocopier might not be part of someone’s job description. And that not everyone may know all the ins and outs of how it works.
At a church we were able to find some pertinent information to our genealogical search and asked if we could have a photocopy of it. The nice pastor said ‘Of course,’ and then with a big smile, ‘follow me.’ Which we did, to what was probably a brand new photocopier. My husband and I had just bought a copier for our company. We knew about copying machines. Ours cost about the same as a mid-sized car and could complete almost any task at hand, except serve lunch. We had read the operating instructions so we appreciated what we saw.
The pastor pulled the church book that I had carried into the room out of my arms, so he could personally set it on the plate while making sure that we didn’t get within striking distance of the machine. After the book was placed face down on the glass plate he randomly started pushing buttons. All the while he was mumbling what sounded like instructions to himself. Knowing how complicated something like this can be, we waited patiently. He pushed all the available buttons but the machine hadn’t as much as burped.
It was frustrating to say the least for everyone. Both my husband and I saw and knew exactly which buttons had to be pushed to get the machine to simply spit out a copy. We didn’t need any of the fancy things that this machine obviously also could do, just one copy. We offered our help, which he graciously declined while continuing his mumbling and button pushing rampage. So we waited patiently some more. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only 5 minutes or so, the machine burped, lit up and spit something out. Eureka! Our pastor relaxed visibly, he might have even smiled. It wasn’t a perfect copy, but he was on the right track. 3 burps and copies later we had a somewhat useable photocopy of the page we wanted.
We thanked him profoundly for his help and gave the photocopy it’s due admiration. Smiles all around.
Man! That’s what I would call a ‘man event’ for sure. Might a woman have handled this situation differently? Maybe, maybe not. All the women I know either read the operating instructions or ask for help from someone who has.
The invisible cloak
On a different occasion we were sitting in a parish office waiting for the pastor to bring us some church books we had chosen. I was sitting to the left of my husband at a long conference table.
When the pastor entered the room carrying a number of books he only looked at and spoke to my husband. I had to check to make sure I hadn’t unintentionally put on my invisible cloak! That not being the case, I put it down to him being excited that he had found possibly what we were looking for. He put one of the church books on the table for my husband to look at. He put it to the far right of my husband, not between us. It was almost impossible for me to see it, let alone read it from that distance. Of course I would have understood completely if I had just finished eating some chocolate on a hot summer day, but my fingers and face were clean.
So I leaned over as far as I could, almost sitting in my husband’s lap, to see the page in the book they were looking at. As Lady Luck would have it, my eyes immediately fell on the ‘Bonauer’ entry they were searching for and I said ‘Look!’ pointing at it with my non-chocolate smeared finger. Then amazingly the pastor found the same entry, too.
The pastor, giving my husband time to write down the information he had found, went to the other side of the table to look at the other books he had brought in. My husband, seized the chance and adeptly moved the book to the perfect place between us so we could both search the contents. At least I was visible to him.
Man o’man o’man! Would a woman have done things differently? That’s a tough call, but somehow I think a woman would have addressed all the people in the room.
Still, it is what it is. People are different, and possibly the same, all over the world. And as far as I know it’s not in my job description to bulldoze people around to change them. But a gentle push might do the trick, if not, I just let them figure things out for themselves.
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