Danny ChaiI love being a guy.
I got into this misunderstanding recently with a friend of mine. Predictably, it was completely my fault – I sent out this super terse e-mail which was incredibly rude if you read it, and not at all what I actually intended. I do that sometimes, especially with terse e-mails. Just come across as rude and don’t communicate what I meant at all. Gotta proofread more.
Anyway, I felt terrible about the misunderstanding and apologized and explained myself and all that. I was just really worried that I had offended him or something and that he’d be really mad.
Fortunately, everything’s good now. But what I loved was his response: “And dude, don’t worry about the offending me stuff! We’re not girls!”
That’s so true. I don’t know, you can disagree with me and whatever, but I just think guys get over these types of things way more easily than girls. Girls just hold long grudges and have these weird love/hate friendships whereas guys can more easily shrug things off.
And, I mentioned this before, but I mean, it’s related to why guys can go on long road trips and be fine, but girls can’t. Put a group of girls together in a car for 10 days straight and they’re coming out bald, insane, and drooling, in that order. Too many people have told me this empirically for me to think it’s not true.
One reason I think this is is that guys have certain activities that kind of bond and help get over differences. Like video games and basketball. Take basketball. Sometimes it turns out you’re (by “you” of course, I mean me) a little peeved at someone, but you end up playing basketball together. And, it’s a great activity, because you don’t really have to be on goot terms to play together. There’s no talking or anything like that involved at all. You just play.
And what ends up happening is that as you play, you kind of bond, and after a while, you discover that you don’t have that thing against him anymore.
I don’t know if that makes sense or if I stand alone here. But basketball I think is weird like that. It just kind of bonds guys, although it doesn’t really make sense why it should. It’s not like we’ve shared or talked or revealed anything about ourselves at all. It’s just an activity.
But that’s actually the great thing about it. It’s great because you can bring someone you don’t know well, or like I said, people you don’t like at the moment, and it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to be close, because it’s just an activity. And yet, something about doing it makes you feel a little closer to everyone, a little more comfortable. It’s great because it brings guys together and you don’t need to be close or even on good terms to do it.
Whereas girls don’t have anything like that, you know? Like, is there an easy way for girls to get a newcomer to feel comfortable in a group? I don’t know, it just seems a lot harder to me.
This is a strange paean to basketball coming from a guy who sucks. But it’s not just basketball I’m talking about. It’s video games also. Mindless, but bonding. Like, my senior year in Serra was great because we had this Nintendo in our room that was essentially on all the time, frequently without me there. I would honestly say it was a bonding thing for our floor, something that made us more comfortable with each other. And, girls don’t really have stuff like that.
Of course, it’s not always like that. Get the wrong group of guys, and when you play ball or video games everyone just gets more angry at each other. But I think most of the time, it’s a good thing. I don’t know, I’m just glad I’m a guy.