I have long had a pretty lousy opinion of men. For many years my view has been that men are just kinda stupid and mean, although what appears to be meanness might just be the result of stupidness (or thoughtlessness or obtuseness).
I'm a reflective enough person that I've considered why I feel this way about the opposite sex. I recognize that these feelings are irrational and stereotypical, but that doesn't make them go away. A long-held prejudice doesn't just disappear because it is acknowledged.
I won't say I hate men, but I just don't "get" them, which is maybe why I never took too much to the god being identified in the masculine idea.
I love D, but I surely don't "get" him and how he thinks. At least weekly I ask him how he manages to stay gainfully employed because the man cannot find the ketchup in the door of the fridge. Ever. I can tell him that we are going to do "XYZ" this weekend, and after I get through explaining, he will, within 2 minutes, look at me and say, "Now what are we gonna do this weekend?"
I always felt like men were lacking in areas that meant a lot to me: sensitivity (although it is funny how I come off sometimes as a very insensitive person), physical attention, honesty (please come out and say you don't want to date me anymore as opposed to just ignoring me, like I suddenly turned invisible).
Anyway, given my feelings, it occurred to me recently that perhaps it is divine justice that I now have 2 sons to raise. Not just one, but two.
In no way do I look at my sons and think, "They are going to grow up to be idiotic men." They are a joy to me (well, except for M's suck and the current nursing pain, but I'm hoping another month and we'll have moved off the pain continuum).
But I guess I need to work on becoming more of a champion of my boys, and not just because they are my boys but because they are boys. Period.
When N came home a few weeks into kindergarten singing the ditty, "Girls go to college to get more knowledge. Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider," I laughed a deep, hard belly-laugh because, I'm not gonna lie, I love a good man-slam. But even as I was enjoying my guffaw, I felt guilty because there running around the yard was my little man from Jupiter, playing with his cars and being his adorable self.
And now I have another littler man in my life.
But I don't know where to begin, aside from borrowing library books on parenting boys and just loving G and M for who they are, even if I really, really don't "get" it.
4 comments:
Hi Carrie,
I just found your blog today, thanks to Katherine over at Postpartum Progress. I love reading your posts. I really enjoy your wit and appreciate the way you write. I am going to follow your posts as much as possible. Coincidentally, today over lunch I was telling my girlfriends that I at one point hated men. Thought 95% of them were pigs . I thought my odds of finding someone I could marry was so small, I would lament over my fate..that I would stay single for the rest of my life. This was in the early 90s when I was going through one bad relationship after another. I know that my husband and I are very, very different. Sometimes I wonder if that's good or not. I always seem to see couples around me that gel so well together. They're like peas in a pod...or at least they complement each other so well. They seem to be on the same wavelength all the time, want to vacation at the same destinations, do the same things on the weekends together, even go shopping together. Though we don't fall under any of the above, I do have to admit I'm very lucky to have such an honest, down-to-earth, devoted husband (and father to my daughter).
So interesting... I think I feel more pressure in raising my daughter, I've thought about this a lot lately, because she seems a more direct reflection of me? I don't know. But raising a good man is its own kind of challenge for sure.
I don't think any of them can ever see the ketchup, btw. ;-)
Forgot to mention that I got a great kick out of the "Girls go to college to get more knowledge. Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider." Went to an all women's college....need I say more? :)
I don't hate men, but I am not comfortable around them. Never have been, probably never will be.
I'm not so worried about my sons, though...because they're my babies. But I worry about when their friends come over and I want to kick them to the curb.
But so far, the girls that Andrew is friends with make me want to kick them WAY more than the boys. The screams and squeals! Argh! So perhaps our sons are just healing our past difficulties.
Also? My favorite Christmas ever, I got Jeff the gift that he really really wanted...and then I hid it. And he found the first clue to a scavenger hunt under the tree. It was the latest in a series of books, so I took all 8 previous in the series and hid them in places...so the clue were like, "You will find book number 2 in the cabinet next to the trash bags" and "Book number 5 is in the loaf pan"...and all the other places that my lovely engineer asked me about 5 thousand times a week.
It was very satisfying. And illustrated my point, when he was mad at me that he couldn't just GET his present...because he honest to God didn't know where the loaf pan was (this was back when he did most of the cooking, so he'd probably used the loaf pan earlier in the week...used to call me at work to ask where it was...)
Anyway, I highly recommend it.
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