I ♥ Men

Don't get me wrong, ladies.  I love you, too.  But I really ♥ men. In high school, I preferred friendships with men over women. My friendships with guys have been oh-so-much-less complicated than my relationships with girlfriends. Every word you said, depending on your tone of voice, had a potential alternate meaning for a girl.  Going out with girls used to mean hours of deliberation about clothing and hairstyle and makeup and where to go and what time to get there and who would be there and how long we would stay and if there might be someone there we were mad at and on and on.  When I hung out with my guy friends, the plan was just to plop down wherever there was a good place to a. watch TV and drink beer and/or eat or b. sit and stare at a bonfire and drink beer and/or eat or some variation of the two.  At least the guys I've always hung out with have been quite satisfied with those choices of entertainment and none of them has ever expressed angst over how their hair looked or what clothes they would wear to sit by the fire.

I must say, as I've aged, I find girls much more pleasant to hang with.  Now that most of us are mothers or at least have realized we're not quite so important as we once thought, we can just relax and hang out and shoot the breeze.  It's not so much work anymore to hang out with girls.  Women also tend not to get offended as easily the older they get, too, I've found.

I also just love to observe men.  I love how different they are from women.  How circumstances are usually quite black and white for them.  If something is wrong, men come up with a plan to fix it and follow through (sometimes despite the consequences).  How jokey and teasing men can be. 

How tender a man can be around the ladies he loves.  The way men will sometimes wax philosophical and it's a lovely thing to hear what goes on in their minds.  I love how men move. 

I find the male body very beautiful.  Their muscles just hang from their skeletons differently from a woman's.  Men's knees look totally different from women's knees.  Max already has boy knees.  Adam still has toddler knees (that is to say, no knee at all, more of a dimply looking area where a knee will one day emerge).

Here's to all the men in my life: I believe deeply that you are all deserving of respect and admiration.  Men are essential and wonderful people in the world and my world, for one, would be the worse without them.