Tuesday, March 4, 2008

boys are people too

i always thought that when boys turn about 16 they become animals with no social skills to speak of-and they usually don't snap out of it until they reach about 28-unless they get married before then-and even that's not a guarantee. i had a neighbor who got married and suddenly shocked everyone by speaking in full sentences, and articulating his thoughts. on the other hand, i have a friend whose brother constantly bothered us, and when he got married, we all breathed a sigh of relief. however, while he did manage to act slightly more civil in public, hi didn't stop bothering us. he just got his wife to join him. so if we were hanging out in my friend's basement, instead of the lights just going on and off as usual, they were accompanied by the laughter of his wife. eventually this guy did settle down (with only a minor lapse at 24 when he was convinced he was a fire truck, which lasted about two weeks) and now is a responsible father.

so that was my philosophy; rude till proven polite. until the day my brother called me "sweetheart." he's 17. he swears it "slipped out" and he "calls everyone that" but i highly doubt he calls his 6-foot-4 best friend "sweetheart" no. with this slight change of nature, came evenings when he sits and talks with my 14-year-old sister.

while there are still times that i want to beat him up, he's helped me see that not all males (especially the teen-aged variety) are animals.

thanks, bro.

20 comments:

brianna said...

That's just something stupid they tell you at BY to prevent you from talking to boys. In reality, guys are people with actual feelings who can actually be really great. Even young guys. Although yes guys are more immature than girls of the same age.

frumcollegegirl said...

no i didn't mean it like that. my HS never even talked about boys at all (like good ostriches, they felt they shouldn't bother talking about something that wasn't a problem...) i meant more like in terms of manners and graciousness

הצעיר שלמה בן רפאל לבית שריקי ס"ט said...

Boys surprisingly have just as acute stereotypes about girls at times (דעתן קלות- you know...mindless chatter-boxes). Truth is I think the lack of intellectualism and civility among guys is 1. an American thing, 2. an ultra-orthodox-Jewish thing.

I've had many deeply contemplative (and nice!) (male) friends, who hailed mainly from England and South Africa (though there are loads of exceptions).

frumcollegegirl said...

true that...i'll have to say the australian guys i've encountered seemed to be prett polite as well

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

funny how were always defending the opposite gender.
Your post defending boys so to speak.
Yoni's post defending girls so to speak.

But yea there are some normal caring guys out there.

Even little kids, usually their wild and everything, then one of the kids I babysit he was watching a camp video where there was rock climbing, so then he says he's not allowed to do that. His mother protects him so that he can't do these dangerous stuff. So he ends up sounding like an obedient kid rather than a wild boy.

frumcollegegirl said...

yea ur right. but sometimes guys can be stupid. girls: would you stick your hand in a snowblower when the power is on; if it said in huge letters DO NOT PUT HANDS NEAR MACHINE WHILE ENGAGED? a girl in my class is an EMT and she said last week she went on a call where she actually had to pick three severed fingers out of a snowblower.

hello!?!?!?

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

oysh, but thats pure stupidity, I'm not sure if thats a matter of gender.
Did you see this years stella awards? The first place was a WOMAN.

"This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv
Grazinski, of Oklahoma City , Oklahoma , who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home from an OU football game, having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down, $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home."

frumcollegegirl said...

yea i've heard that story before, with a guy driving...

Gaston said...

The Winnebago story seems to be untrue, not that snopes.com is always right.
http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp
http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/cruise.asp

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

it sounded to foolish to be true, o well.

Looking Forward said...

well I didn't hear any stories about men microwaving their heads in order to dry their hair in a hurry...

girls used to do that from time to time. :(

(but then on boys drink and drive all the time.)

frumcollegegirl said...

are you referring to the lady who stuck her poodle/cad in the microwave to cool it off? becuase it's not true:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/microwavedpet.asp

i have never heard of girls drying their hair that way. it's not practical.

Looking Forward said...

FCG, y'know how microwaves can't be turned on if the door is open, and turn off if its opened while its on?

And ovens dont?

Well the reason is because girls would stick their heads in there to dry their hair, decades ago when the microwave was first invented, and a number of girls died because of it. (most people didn't really understand that a microwave works very differently than an oven.)

but you can't do it anymore, and haven't been able to do so in a really, really long time.

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

interesting...

ahh I just thought of a true story of a foolish thing someone did, but this a boy who did it, so doesn't prove my point.

But one time a boy who was maybe 12 years old was trying to open a grape juice bottle and he couldn't open it, so what did he do? he took a knife and tried poking the top of the cap to make a whole in it. Then what happened? the knife slipped and went into his hand between the thumb and second finger and he had to get stitches, now thats foolish. I was there when it happened, I was younger but smart enough to not offer to hold the bottle while he tried "opening it"

Looking Forward said...

I knew of a kid (one who was ostentaciously a friend) who, when we were learning wittling decided to take his large swiss army knife and remove all of the tools...

he cut himself pretty badly.

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

ouch, btw, you know what I just realized? Today I was playing around with my pen and the clip part that usually sticks out when you put the pen in a pocket broke off. If you look at the metal part its really sharp and looks like a mini knife, so there's another thing to not allow on airplanes...lol

frumcollegegirl said...

yoni-i never heard of anything like that with the microwave. where did you hear that?

babysitter-any object can be a deadly weapon. i was once pinning something and i stuck the safety pin in my mouth, and guess what happened? it got stuck on my tongue! you know the part with the circle, the part where it bends? so my tongue got stuck in between! and i couldn't even stop to take it out cuz i was in such a hurry. and i couldn't even call my dad for help cuz i couldn't talk! so there i was, driving around with a safety pin stuck to my tongue. man it was painful!

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

omg, ouch! ouch!
that makes me cringe and shiver.
your tongue still ok?
I heard stories of people who had ice cubes stuck to their tongue but this is much worse.

frumcollegegirl said...

yea, it's fine, in desperation (and sheer terror, i thought I'd have that stuck on me forever)i yanked it off. it made me cry cuz it hurt so much, and i was bleeding allot, but no lasting damage. :) (sorry if that totally grossed anyone out, these things don't bother me at all so i sometimes forget about those more squeamish than myself)

Looking Forward said...

ouch~! I'm really squeemish and when I hear those kinds of things I can almost feel it happening to me...