Ambiguity

I was that little kid crying on the playground because she was worried about what would happen when her cat died ten years later. I was that little kid fussing over the political correctness of backward overalls and Indian (Native American) day. Oh golly did that change, I'm one of the least politically correct people I know, without meaning to be. When I say that my insightfulness is a double-edged sword, I mean it in the sense that sometimes I think about things on a different level than most people do during their daily routine. I'm an insightful thinker, and not really a "hey, how's the weather" kind of gal. But I will talk with you about inoculating children, rescuing animals, or my limited knowledge of spirituality among other things like seeing a random car on the street and looking for a particular person in it, or drinking coffee and wondering when the filter was last changed. I will look at you funny if you want to talk about how humid it is outside.

Most of the ideas that pop into my head come to me by way of road rage and North Carolina's atrocious traffic, which my classes cleverly seem to be scheduled to start and end with. I was driving today and I was thinking -- right now, there is someone going through something so horribly bad you can't conceive it. You don't know this person yet. But you will. Someday, and you could meet them by sitting on them next to an airplane, accidentally bumping elbows on a train, etc. and you will be a sign of the end of their suffering. If you're a halfway pleasant person, you probably smile at strangers and open the door for the elderly. Or you're like everybody else and let the door slam in their face, or don't realize there's an elderly person behind you until after you've let this happen. I come by my friends pretty easily, and I genuinely love people. I've met several of them by chance in very unfortunate situations, most of them by random or association with people I already knew. Some of them were my patients, some of them were family of my patients, and some of them just started telling me their life stories as I apparently give off a vibe that I'd love to hear the whole shebang. I once met a man on a flight homebound from Fort Myers. He had the middle seat next to me on our connecting flight through Atlanta. He looked like an average Joe to me with a baseball cap, some blonde stubble, and a little bit of a beer belly. He turned to me and started asking me some pretty basic questions... nothing personal. He wanted to know where I went to school, what for, if I was working, how old I was, and we somehow started talking about family. If you can get someone onto this subject and they are a family oriented person, you won't hear the end. Or you will, just hours later when you're landing and thinking about eating every single cinnamon roll at Cinnabon in one sitting. It turns out that this man that I didn't even know prior to my boarding my 12:00 flight had just lost his fiancee in a car wreck a month before they were supposed to get married. At the point when I met this man, it'd only happened four months before. He described in detail how he had to identify her body and couldn't get out of bed for a month afterwards. He told me about how their dog would go and lie in her spot as if to keep it warm, thinking she was coming back at some point. He got choked up talking about how he absolutely fell in love with this woman's son and daughter who were relatively young, and how these children would be sent back to Kansas to be with their father, who had nothing to do with them. He had fostered these children and done this man's job going to all the baseball games, the Indian Princess meetings, and late night Wal-Mart runs for project supplies, and this man who did not even ask questions about the birth of his youngest child, had legal rights to both of them. I walked off that flight thinking about how good I have it, and how easily your life can be flipped over and dumped on the table in a blink. I don't know what it is about me that makes people want to tell me about very deep personal things, but part of me hopes it never goes away. I connect on a very deep level with the people around me. Sometimes it's depressing and a bit of a burden when I wish I had the innocence of people who don't connect the dots so easily on the negativity of human nature, but it's always insightful, and a daily reminder that we all bleed the same. Somewhere relatively close to you, someone is hurting. Someone has lost something. Someone is lost themselves. It doesn't hurt to bring over a muffin basket sometimes.

Man vs. Woman: The Neverending Fight Feminism Started

                                       


I came across an interesting post made by a male friend of mine on a social networking site today. Now, I'm not one to rant on a social networking site unless I'm having an off day and happen to slip, but this comment really was one of the most ironic and sadistic comments I've ever come across. He posted, "A good woman should never let her man leave the house hungry or horny." Now, though that phrasing does come off a tad bit disrespectful and demeaning, I understand the meaning behind it. Now, he didn't hesitate after the first female responded to post, "All of y'all are sl*ts anyways, so I don't give a f*ck what you have to say." Classy. There went the ironic bit of it. If you want a good woman, the worst thing you can possibly do is rant and rave about how much you despise and hate women. On a social networking site. For pretty much any woman who cares to see. Being the snarky person that I can sometimes be, I left a comment saying, "That last tidbit is something maturity should've taught you to keep to yourself."

Now, I do have a problem with feminism. Yes, I am a woman, and I have an issue with it because you crazy machete wielding man-hating hybrids have created a bad name for those of us who really do strive to love a man the way he deserves to be loved. Yes, ladies, they deserve to be loved. We are so quick to demand that a man cater to us, and meet our needs without looking at what they may need from us. The funniest thing about that being that they are the easier to please out of either gender. Give him a plate of chicken wing dip and he's yours forever. Not really, he's yours until the last chip scrapes the bottom. I digress...

Can we not agree to disagree that there are some things that men are just biologically engineered to be better at than we are? I'm sorry, if I was in a war zone and the man next to me was wounded, I pity the fool because I'm ninety pounds of skinny white girl. If my engine goes out on the highway? Not only am I royally screwed, I just turned into a five year old -- locking myself in my car while calling triple A and hyperventilating as my paranoid imagination is set into motion. In both of these situations, I would rather have a burly, masculine man at my side to help me. In equal respect, I would laugh if my boyfriend told me he made me cupcakes the same way he'd laugh if I told him I bled my brakes. The cupcakes would probably not be edible, and the brake lines would be ruined. I am perfectly happy to "get in that there kitchen" and make an incredible meal for a man that squishes the spiders and provides the way that a real man should.

Once upon a time in the days of good old homegrown tradition, women needed men to bring home the bacon and they needed us to raise children and to cook (because a man in the kitchen was unheard of, for a reason). Now that women are working and leaving the child rearing to daycare and extended families (nothing against all of you that do, it's a necessity for most) we don't "need" men as much as we used to. We can bring home our own bacon, and we can take care of ourselves. This completely emasculates their red-blooded need to provide and take care of us. Any masculine, thoroughbred male has a need to take care of the physically weaker member of the relationship, it's instinctual. And I'm one to talk, there's nothing to see here at this "gun show." (peew,peew,peew!) There is an issue in this society with a new generation of men who are content to let the woman take the reigns and be the provider, or to take on the role of mister mom, and I honestly don't know how ya'll do it unless she really makes that much more than you do. It's not biologically how we were designed, and I honestly couldn't be with a man like that because I'm too much of a traditional woman. I believe that real men love their women and provide for their families in some way, no matter what it takes. That is what my alpha-male father did, and I expect that out of a man that has my affections. In the same sense, women are the more loving and affectionate partner who love in a more sensitive way than a man is built to love. Men and women were designed to take care of eachother, and the differences that frustrate and confound us entirely become one of the things that keeps men in love with women, and women in love with men. I may not entirely understand the way that my man thinks or rationalizes things, but I love the way that he is protective of me and provides in every way he can. He may think that I'm oversensitive, but he loves that I care to the extent that I do, in a way that only I can. Women don't understand that men love differently than they do. Don't expect him to collapse into your lap after a hard day of work and sob about how Rick and Joey made fun of his jelly rolls and cellulite. Don't expect him to write you extensive poetry, or to enjoy talking about feelings. A good man will talk about feelings when you need to talk about them, but very rarely unless you've done something offensive, will his perception of feelings ever come up. It doesn't mean he doesn't feel those feelings, or that he loves me any less. He's just a man. And that is really the only way to explain it. On the same note, he can't expect me to be able to be unemotional about things that he finds ridiculous to be emotional over (because sometimes I can't help it. That squirrel we ran over probably had a family and I bet they sing and dance) and when it's that time of the month, he can definitely expect me to be a little more irritable than normal. We are different animals and we are wired in a way that is hard for the other to quip sometimes, but that is the love/hate relationship of the gender divide and I wouldn't trade men for anything... which technically the only other option would be women. As a straight female, I think I'll stick to the men. No offense, ladies.

 I believe several mantras for what constitutes a real man and they go like this...

   A real man loves his woman unabashedly
   A real man protects his woman without fear
   A real man squishes various insects (also without fear, but if he is feeling fear, hopefully he's hiding it)
   A real man won't let a woman pay unless she's insistent or it is her treat
   A real man provides for his family, no matter the cost of sacrifice to himself
   A real man doesn't maintain an "out of sight, out of mind" mindset
   A real man is always faithful (even if she's attractive, he knows he's got the best at home)
   A real man values his relationship with his woman more than his ego (giant male ego)
   A real man picks his woman up and slings her around just to demonstrate his caveman strength
   A real man sugar-coats things sometimes because he simply cares enough to do that

(You're supposed to be reading this in an R. Lee Ermey voice)