Explosions are Flowers For Men

(Dec 2009)

I've decided to have a guest blog post again.  This time it is going to be from Michael himself this is something he wrote when we were dating.  Michael always said he liked my sass (I think he may feel differently these days) and I think this proves it. This post is an encounter we had while we were dating.  I like it because I totally won and he liked it:

Last night, I was having a discussion with my girlfriend, Lisa, about the differences between Men and Women. In case you are unaware, there ARE differences. It was rather insightful, so I decided to post a couple of the highlights here.

 
First, Men are jerks and Women are crazy. But there is a reason for it. Men are very analytical people. We rely on logic and reason and try our hardest to keep emotions and feelings out of our decisions. So when we don’t take into account a women’s feelings, we end up coming across as jerks. Conversely, women tend to think with their emotions and feelings. And those don’t make any logical sense. So we end up seeing women as crazy.

 
The real reason that this is becomes a problem is that men judge women as if they were men. The same is true of women. They expect men to make decisions like women. When a women says, “He was such a jerk! He didn’t even think about how I would feel about that!”, the guy isn’t trying to be a jerk. He simply has no idea how to think about that. He can try, and will occasionally have success, but by far and wide, he will not have any clue on how to do that. And when a women goes and buys her 50th pair of shoes, the guy will get upset. That’s because he doesn’t understand why she needs yet another when she already has 49 other perfectly good pairs. Currently, I own 4 pairs of shoes. A dress pair, an everyday pair, a work pair (which is the old everyday pair), and my riding boots. Why would anyone need more than that? Ok. Maybe a couple more pairs, if they have a specific purpose. But no more than about 8. But a woman will buy a $100 pair of shoes to go with an outfit that they wear once a year. How does that make sense? But like I said, the reason for these misunderstandings is because men are judging women by mens standards and also, women are holding men to womens standards.

 
Second, she finally helped me to understand why women like when men give women flowers. Here’s the conversation to the best of my recollection.

 
Me: Why do women like flowers? I mean, I understand the WHAT of it all, it’s just the WHY that I don’t get. I mean, I know that if I’m in the doghouse, or if you’re having a bad day, I can get you flowers and things will be better. But WHY is that?

 
Her: First off, it really depends on what you did to get in the doghouse. Flowers may not be enough.

 
Me: Fair enough.

 
Her: Second, it means that you went and did something really outside of your norm that it couldn’t be anything other than completely for me.

 
Me: So, it’s a test?

 
Her: Well it’s more than that. That’s only a small part of it. The real reason is that they’re also pretty and they smell good.

 
Me: You’re proving my point. What purpose does that serve? I mean, last week, when I was having a really bad day, you took me out to my favorite place to eat and bought me dinner.

 
Her: Yeah. You ate it and it was gone. At least flowers last.

 
Me: Not that long. And besides, dinner at In-N-Out was taking something that I would have done anyway and did it for me, so I didn’t have to do it. It wasn’t doing something for the sake of doing something. It was taking something that I would have done anyway and doing it for me. And doing it in the best possible way.

 
Her: But they are pretty and they smell good. We like those types of things.

 
Me: But WHY? It doesn’t serve a purpose.

 
Her: Let me try this another way. What if I gave you an explosion? I don’t mean blowing something up that needed blowing up. Just taking you somewhere and igniting a bunch of explosives. Just blowing stuff up for the sake of blowing stuff up.

 
Me (thinking): I don’t like where this is going.

 
Her: Would you like that?

 
Me: …

 
Her: Would you like to go out to the desert and light off explosives?

 
Me: …

 
Her: Why would you like to go out to the desert and blow stuff up?

 
Me: …

 
Her: It’s because it looks pretty and smells good.

 
Game, Set, and Match. I thought I was doing pretty good right up until the end. Then Bam! I was against the ropes. I had nothing.

 
Finally, the funniest part to me was how we ended this conversation.

 
Me: Babe, I’m glad that you love me despite the fact that I’m a jerk.

 
Her: And I’m glad that you love me despite the fact that you think I’m crazy.