This one’s for the guys…

Men always go on and on and on about how they don’t understand women and women always go on and on and on about….shopping.  I totally admit that we XX folk are enigmas, no denying that.  We could tell you our secrets or show you our handbook, but what fun would there be in that?!  As with any species, there are variations among gender.  For example with males, there are metros, the guy’s guy, the sports nut, the Mr. Fix It, the Bad Boy, etc and at some point every guy thinks he is every one of those examples.  But there is one thing that I have never been able to figure out…

Why do men ALWAYS get out of the car when they are at a gas station!?  So I have some theories:

1. Their backs are screwed up because one of their butt cheeks is propped up by a file cabinet (aka wallet) and they need to stretch it out.
2. They are hoping that the “new mechanic” will turn out to be this girl and they are just showing their manners.
3. Their windows don’t roll down and they have gas.
4. Or you could go the whole showing dominance over the pump jockey route (because you are bigger, stronger and more manly even though you are driving your wife’s VW bug)

I’m just really hoping that evolution doesn’t bring this habit to the point where men get out and pee on their car to show it’s theirs.  You’ll understand once you watch this…

Boys will be boys

So yesterday I went to Worcester to visit my best friend and her family.  Well we ended up taking her cousins out to lunch and that just turned into an adventure.  But spending the day with 3 boys (16, 14, 10) really cemented my belief that the male species does not mature past 14. 

Since I’m not creepy I don’t usually have the occasion to spend my time with random teenagers.  And if I were creepy, my time would probably be taken up by appearances on the Maury Povich Show.  It was an afternoon filled with fart jokes, actual farts, and Wii.  Fast forward twenty years and spend some time  with 3 guys and I’m guessing you will have a very similar afternoon, maybe with boob jokes instead of fart jokes.  Let me give you a real life sample. 

When I started work at my recent office, I was the only female in a company of 9.  We were at lunch when one of the guys was being urged to tell a joke.  Here is the joke:  What type of bees make milk?  Wait for it…wait for it….Boobies!!  I should have run right there but decided to stick around for over 2 years.  Let’s call it what it was…I worked in a nerdified frat house.  Don’t get me wrong, it was HIGHLY entertaining, I just find it funny that spending the day with teenage boys made me think of my coworkers, almost all thrity-something MITers.

Basically, at least as I see it, men are just old boys that don’t hide their Playboys anymore, enjoy a good cloud of bodily odors and tell a joke just so they can say “boobies” out loud (and proceed to giggle hysterically).  Betcha Darwin in all his evolutionary glory, never made that comparison!!

The blinker is that thing on the left of your steering wheel!

Today’s topic is something that has bothered me more or less….FOREVER.  OK, so when I was 2 it probably didn’t bother me, but you know what I mean.

Turn Signal: a blinking light on a motor vehicle that indicates the direction in which the vehicle is about to turn. Synonyms: blinker, signal, directional

Now the reason I thought I needed to include a dictionary entry in there, is because when I was driving today 9 out of 10 people in front of me had no idea such a thing existed.  In all fairness, maybe I just had the luck of being behind everyone who was lost today and all of a sudden decided they needed to turn without time to signal. Could it happen?  Sure.  Do I have that kind of luck? Lately, yes. Is it a realistic scenario? Not so much.

To continue with unsupported statistics, it seemed like 90% of these drivers were men…shocker.  For some reason, the majority of guys I know will not use a blinker unless instructed.  When their omission is commented on the usual retorts are: No one was behind me, It was obvious I was turning, They should pay more attention to other drivers.

Uh huh, sure.  It’s them….not you.

Women, we are not the perfect drivers some of us think we are, but at least we have the courtesy of using the blinker to tell people, and in some cases alert them “I’m going over here know, consider yourself warned!”

Mr. Machos, I guarantee that using your blinker will not show weakness, hurt your rep with the boys, or turn you into a feminine metro who gets manicures.  It won’t…I swear it!  I mean, come on, with all those big, brawny muscles, is it really that hard to push around a little lever? 😉  Perhaps it is genetic, something in the Y chromosome prevents you from using any form of turn signal. Yeah right, I would love to see that proof.

So here is my proposal, think of it as the Pay It Forward model. When you use your blinker it prevents you from being rear-ended or sideswiped, allowing emergency services to go elsewhere, which brings down crime and deaths, virtually creating a utopia.  So the next time you find yourself hesitating to signal, just remember, if you don’t you are single-handedly destroying society!  Do you want that guilt…I think not!

What exactly is a cougar?

I’m not talking about the puma or the catamount (which are the same thing), I’m talking about that forty-something woman in a bar dressing too young for her age eyeing the younger fresh meat.

Wiki defines a cougar as “an older woman who sexually pursues men at least 8 years their junior.” I don’t exactly agree with this since a 50 y/o woman dating a 42 y/o man is OK.  But if we are talking a 30 y/o dating a college senior, we are in cougar territory in my eyes.

Please don’t think that I am dissing all of the cougars out there.  If you have all the goods to woo a man much younger than you after you have “passed your prime”…more power to you.  But have you ever noticed that they come in two forms?  The lone stalker and the pride.

The lone stalker is the woman at the piano bar in the hotel casting the come hither stare towards the handsome young dot commer.  The pride is when there are multiple cougars in a pack where one is obviously the alpha cougar.  She hunts down the prey and points it out for the rest of her pride to ogle.  The Alpha Cougar is easy to spot, she will be the first to randomly dance, yell “woohoo” when the DJ plays Bon Jovi, and ask the guy next to her (who is old enough to be her son) for a cigarette just so she can light it seductively.

Perhaps if I ever become a forty something divorcee with nothing better to do on a Saturday night, I too will gather my girls and go on the hunt, but for right now I am enjoying watching my personal version of “As the Cougar Turns.”