That Other Half of the Species…

This was started in Sept 2006 and never finished. But its still worth reading I think. But I am a bit biased...

That Other Half of the Species…

I find men endlessly entertaining…as much as I try to minimize the differences between the sexes (well, its not that I minimize the differences, I just tend to think that our shared humanity is much larger and more implicating than the differences based on hormones and genitalia)….anyhow, there are some things men do that I don’t understand!

Case in Point #1:

Last night over a birthday dinner, we played Apples to Apples. The game involves a judge, who chooses an adjective card, and the rest of the players, who offer a noun card for the judge to choose as the best fit for his adjective. For example, if your adjective card is “Explosive” the noun cards might include “Volcano,” “Chili,” “Rush Limbaugh,” “Exorcism,” and the random cards from folks who had nothing good to offer, like “Betsy Ross,” “Apples,” and “Milwaukee.” Whoever’s card is chosen by the judge gets a point, and a new round starts with a new judge and a new adjective card.

The problem is, for men, there are “trump cards.” Basically, no matter what the adjective, these cards represent something so revered in male culture that the card wins by default of being cool (where, in this case, cool means really nerdy in an 10 year old boy sort of way). The fact that there are trump cards alone says so much about men…but then, what qualifies as a trump card says so, so much more.

Last night’s trump cards included:

-Ninjas

-The GodFather (which was never actually played, but was agreed upon as being THE trump card if it was indeed in the deck).

-Exorcism (beat my submission of “Tidal Wave” for “Refreshing” – I am disgruntled!)

To women, I would bet a large amount of money, Ninjas, The Godfather, and Exorcism mean nothing. Absolutely nothing. Okay, maybe they cause a little bit of annoyance, but that’s it. But to men, these are magic words. They conjure up another, forgotten world, where superman undies, cereal, video games, and smelly squishy things thrown at each other constituted the best in life.

So therefore, a good communal game of Apples to Apples (which is one of the few games I will play because its more about hilarity and wittiness than competition or embaressing antics) gets reduced to a boys club - where the grown men basically split off, grunt and giggle over horse heads in bed and black masks and throwing stars, and leave the game to go build a fort with "no girls allowed" painted on the outside.
Which I guess would be fine, except girls don't have trump cards. We are fair, we are relational. If we could, we would choose every card. Even the lame ones that don't fit - like "slippery" and "barbara thatcher". We spend all this time hemming and hawing over which cards we can legitimately discount without hurting anyone's feelings. Which makes us about as lame as the boys with their trump cards, now that I think about it.