Boy-Friends

A few months back, in some magazine somewhere, I read an article about the French president and his hot wife, Carla. The point of this article, as I remember it, was to try to figure out the wife. At one point, the writer suggested that we all knew her "type" and then went on to elaborate that she was the kind of woman whose friends were mostly male. This clearly wasn't meant to indicate anything good.

It kind of got my back up, because before I met the Captain and started riding around in his car with him, arguing about what to listen to on the radio, I spent most of my free time riding around in a car (arguing about what to listen to on the radio) with three good friends. And those three friends were all male. In fact, most of my friends back then were male. And I'd say that now, though I really only ever get together on my own with other women, and I value those women immensely, a good chunk of my "friends" are still guys.

One such buddy is celebrating a birthday today. And because he is the guy who knows about all things male, we will call him the Man.

The Man is actually a friend of the Captain, or to be even more technical, they are co-workers. But the military, more than any other profession, tends to blur the lines between the social and the professional, and before you know it, you're getting together with your work peers for parties and barbecues and you know everything there is to know about their personal life, either straight from them, or through local gossip.

With it being the military, there are also a lot of women left on their own to fend for themselves in emergencies. For this reason, it's great to have an extra guy around when your own is trudging through a field or shooting at something on another continent or whatever. And it is for this reason that I love being friends with the Man.

When the truck breaks down, or a window gets broken, or I need help figuring out how to use a power tool without slicing my own arm off, he figures out my situation and tells me what to do. Being female, I then hear exactly what I want to, do whatever I please and generally set back the women's movement another ten years. But that's not the point. The point is that I have that nice secure feeling of knowing that if a plane flies through my living room window while the Captain is elsewhere, the Man will be out there somewhere applying man-like logic to the problem.

The man has a wife (who I also love) and kids, and one day someone asked me if the Captain and the wife didn't find my chatting with the Man a little weird. I wasn't confounded by this question. I do understand that for some women, this whole idea is foreign and strange. And, having once been in a relationship with someone who couldn't be trusted around members of the opposite sex, I understand where the question came from.

But here's the thing about men. If you and the men you're friends with are unavailable to one another (which is obviously the case here) and not looking to do something really gross to the other parent of your children (again, not something any of us would do), men are darn good fun! Getting together with other women can sometimes turn into one long angry vent, or a gossip session, or an excuse to be judgemental. With men, what you see is what you get. You talk about how to fix a leaky tap and then you have a laugh about something goofy. It's refreshing.

So, today, I want to wish my boy-friend a very happy birthday. And also to ask him to please come over and fix the rest of my house before I lose my mind...

Comments

Nancy said…
You said it, lady! One of my best friends, for 25+ years (ack, that long!) is a guy. My boyfriend and his girlfriend have no problem with that, do not feel threatened (no reason to).
Love this, and being from a long line of military,I do understand! We can have male friends..and especially male friends who can fix things..lol
Janine said…
OH - MY - GOD!!!
I am not the FIRST!!
I am so GLAD that there are other wonderful bloggers out there that are reading your blog...
FABULOUS!!!
I too spent most of my life being BEST friends with guys!!
Happy birthday to your MAN and I hope the Captain is safe and sound, wherever he is!!

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