"Did you learn anything here?"

I'm a 31-year-old woman who works as a gardener at a small hardware store in Central Florida. Occasionally I'll work the cash register, and one day I overheard an older male customer talking to a coworker of mine. We were the only three people in the vicinity, and I was not part of the conversation. They were talking about women, in general, in a mostly old-fashioned pedestal way that's wholly unnecessary. 

Then the older man started speculating about why younger women don't marry anymore, and he concluded that it must come down to childhood trauma and bad parenting. (Apparently the concept of childhood trauma and abuse doesn't predate 1985, and it only pertains to women.)

Before the man left, he turned to me, pointed his finger at me and said, in a most accusing tone, "Did YOU learn anything here?" 

I was taken aback and said something jumbled, socially awkward and probably weird, I don't quite remember what. Something about women being regular people. To which he replied, "Well you just like to complicate it, don't you?"

You know, I did learn something that day. I learned that it's 2016, and to many men, women are basically considered children.