He Needs Her

Tonight we went out to pizza with some old friends.  We have known this couple for almost 30 years. The wife of this couple and and I went through both our pregnancies together and our kids have also been life-long friends.

Now the kids are grown up and forging their way in the world.  Each of our kids has a different personality and life path.  It's so funny how life twists and turns and throws us all curve balls when we least expect them.

I guess I'm learning how vulnerable boys really are.  They are under so much pressure and they don't get the consideration of a sympathetic media unlike girls.  Believe me, I know girls have been treated like garbage throughout history, but let's not leave out boys as they're victims of unfair social expectations as well.

Where I'm going with this is that I think boys nowadays have it pretty tough.  We've stripped them of their manhood and taken away all of their natural tendencies belittling then all the way saying they are bad.  They can't play cops and robbers.  They can't play cowboys and Indians.  They can't play with sticks.  They can't play with plutonium and other explosives (just checking to see if iyou're awake LOL).  Here's my point.  We're trying to casterate them because the 'bored moms on prozac committee' thinks all forms of intellect exists on a nationalized test score and the ability to recite spelling words.  We've abolished the industrial arts in schools because we foolishly believed that all society really needs are more forms for us to fill out to advance the paper pusher management initiative.  We tell boys to sit still in an artificial environment for hours on end listening to some teacher drone on.  Show me a building or a bridge that was built with forms.

No wonder boys are frustrated and depressed.

The son of our friends we were at dinner with (I consider him a son as well) now lives in SF with his girlfriend.  He's not cut out for the corporate world as an insurance agent or stock broker.  God knows we already have enough of them in the world.  Where does that leave him?  He's a card shark.  He does OK as a card shark, but that's not my point.  My point is that boys don't have a lot of viable options for their careers if they don't want to spend their lives in an office cubicle.

Which now gets me to his girlfriend.  SHE's the one with the job and benefits.  He lives with HER.  He needs her more than she needs him.  She would be perfectly ok financially without him -- and he would be on the streets without her.    It's a pattern I'm seeing more and more of.