When I was 8, I spent a lot of time in “junior church.” Junior church, for those who haven’t been, is sort of like youth group, but for kids. So there is some attempt at having lessons and meaningful discussions, but mostly the kids get to run around and goof off in the basement, which is something those in the sanctuary above us would have frowned upon had we been up there.
I have a lot of junior church stories, because apparently most of my childhood church memories come from Oak Park. And I’m sure I’ve told the following story before, but it is one of the most prescient stories of my childhood, so it keeps coming up.
After the lesson, the free time was often spent with the boys chasing the girls around the basement. (It’s only now that I wonder if these were the mornings when the teachers had just been so overwhelmed that they were giving up for the rest of the day.) I distinctly remember one particular time when the boys were trying to snatch purses from the girls, and most of the girls were squealing and running. I, however, was standing firm in the center of the room, calling out to the other girls, “If you don’t want them to chase you, just stop running and they’ll lose interest!” A boy ran past me and grabbed at my purse. I yanked it out of his grasp and gave him a withering look.
This story is a good illustration of my personality on several levels, but for the purposes of this post, it's a good illustration of the fact that the guy/girl dynamic mostly escapes me. I don’t like the double-talk and the backstage chatter and the dissection of meaning. Not that I haven’t done it, because I totally have. But it just gets…*annoying*. And it often seems like such a pointless waste of time.
Example that inspired this post: overhearing a group of guys in the cafeteria at work talking about how “whipped” somebody was. I thought to myself, “This guy is either disrespecting the other guy’s girlfriend, OR he actually believes it’s really nice that the girl calls her boyfriend so many times a day, and this is a weird male way of expressing that.” I don’t understand.
And as the song says, “We don’t like what we don’t understand—in fact, it scares us.”
On a semi-related end note, if I ever am “seeing” somebody in the dating sense, and anybody starts calling him “whipped,” I’ll probably hate it so much that I’ll try to break up with him.
Summary: I don’t think I operate like normal girls.
4 comments:
No, you don't operate like normal girls, and that is a very good thing. And that guy was dissing both his friend and his friend's girlfriend, but mostly he was dissing his friend.
Couldn't it be possible that the "whipped" guy just really loves his girlfriend?
Also, people's definitions of "whipped" differ. People called Ryan whipped because he was willing to do things I enjoyed even though he didn't, just to make me happy.
I think there's definitely other options.
I didn't say anything about the intentions of the guy who talks to his girlfriend so many times a day. He came off looking the best in that conversation. I certainly have nothing bad to say about Ryan for doing things sacrificially for you, in a way that isn't as big of a sacrifice because of the joy he gets from seeing you happy.
I have never thought it was appropriate to insult somebody, even jokingly so, for doing good things. Nor do I appreciate the denigration of male leadership into something that has to mean getting his own way instead of something that can come out very powerfully in service. It's one of those things that's too close to my heart to be joked about, and I would be horrified if I thought that somebody was being nice to me because I was manipulating/strong-arming him.
That's what I meant.
I understood what you meant.
"I have never thought it was appropriate to insult somebody, even jokingly so, for doing good things."
I couldn't agree more! Just ask me how I feel about the whole, "We're laughing with you, not at you." Ugh
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