It’s cool today, really cool, like you wish you had a jacket cool. Compared to this summer, it was a welcome relief. The Professor and I went to Mellow Mushroom for lunch and even now, I am in a warm, enveloping tired of yummy bread and cheese.
The Butcher called from the driveway to insist I go to the front yard and look at that “badass shit.”
The nice thing about having a sibling is that I didn’t have to leave my comfy spot on the couch. I knew what he meant.
“The surprise lilies?”
“Those orange badass things?”
“Yeah.”
“We should have more of those.”
If only I could get him that enthusiastic about trimming the yard, my life would be perfect.
One of the things I like best about the Professor is that we’ve known each other long enough now that she knows how my mind works. So, I forget what we were talking about and I was giving some example that I wanted to illustrate something, but I realized halfway through giving the example that, under ordinary circumstances, it didn’t illustrate my point at all.
Like if I was all “It was like looking at a blue penguin” and the Professor was like “Yes, and that’s how you knew the shoes were red.” Who knows how my brain got from “blue penguin” to “red shoes” but it didn’t stop the conversation.
The Butcher and I were talking about why guys don’t go to the bathroom together and girls do. I was like “When do you gossip? How do you bond?” And he was all “Um, text message?” Like it was totally obvious.
Anyway, I’m not sure what these stories have to do with each other, except that it’s nice when you’re on the same wavelength as someone and sometimes hilarious when you’re not.
Text messaging? Really, gentlemen? This is how you’re developing and maintaining your social networks?
My male social network primarily consists of husbands of my wife’s friends and dads of my kid’s friends. But those two categories generally overlap pretty thoroughly.
Don’t think of social networks as being the same structure or even serving the same purpose as those for females and then it may become more clear. Not apples to apples in form nor function, from what I can tell.
Some men can go without seeing each other for years and when they meet again, it is as if nothing has changed. I am not so certain that females work that way as often or as much as men.
Male social structures often have a lot more inherent heirarchy. This is accepted and reinforced. That is another thing I don’t see in generally female circles, though I certainly may be wrong. And since male social structures have morphed into workplaces, you can probably draw conclusions as to how that can create issues in gender relations as a whole.
Currently, my male social structures stem from work, from my children and their activities, and from my friends of many years. The latter has turned into a online gaming guild (MMO gaming, not gambling gaming) of over 40 people led by a core of my social group from Way Back wherein innocuous heirarchies dominate and control activity and participation.
LOL. Cracker reminded me I left out some of my social network. My gaming guild. It’s like golfing buddies for geeks.