Woman--Man's Best Friend?

In today's society, the young people I see seem to have been lacking in knowledge of what it takes to meet decent members of the opposite sex. Instead, the bookshelves in area malls are full of self-help books, designed to help single women understand the male species and focus on translating a boy's conduct and words into meaningful communication with fancy phrases from so-called experts, most of whom are women. These self-help manuals are designed to simplify the issue, and while these tactics may work to sell books, it does nothing to solve the communication gap between men and women.

We live in a society that has taken to heart the adage that women are from "Venus," and that men come from another planet. Therefore, all speech must be translated into "womanspeak." If that is the case, then where are the self-help manuals for young men to read to help them understand the crazy antics of teenage girls? What parents teach their children become what young adults embrace as truth. When young girls are fed fairy tales and hogwash about knights in shining armor who will show up one day-out of the blue-to rescue the damsel in distress is setting up their child for future heartbreak. The same is true of young boys hearing these fairy tales-they grow up believing that the ideal woman will always be beautiful, well-groomed and eager to obey every order given by a man just because he "saved" her from a fate worse than death- spinsterhood.

It is now the twenty-first century and not much has changed. Most of the novels sold in bookstores throughout the malls of America glorify the romance novel wherein the hero is a rakish black heart who seeks to destroy the heroine's family. Romance heroes may not be perfect, but they have integrity! On the other hand, the heroine is consistently portrayed as a slatternly know-it-all, a tomboy who clings to Daddy, hates her sisters, acts out in public, and has no respect for authority. The heroine exists solely to be ravished by the man she despises, and she calls that love.

Self-help manuals for young men should be aimed at understanding the craziness of what it is like to be a woman. Women know that God made man first. When he got around to making woman, women believe He got a little overly enthusiastic and added too many analytical thought processes to the woman's brain. As a result, womankind has not just complemented man, she has taken over his life by second-guessing his every move, analyzed his every word and action and finished his sentences before he did. Every mother's son knows that this is a fact. They have witnessed it throughout childhood.

Eve may have been deceived when Satan offered her the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, saying that God was holding back things she needed to know and ate from the fruit. But when she offered it to Adam, telling him how delicious the fruit was, he believed her. He knew that God had told him not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and he made the choice to believe his wife. Adam was not deceived. Forever afterward, women never allowed their men to forget the fact that they are directly answerable to God for the choices they make. Since then, women have wanted men to choose the right things in life, and they go about influencing his decision in roundabout ways.

Woman was not created first, and the fact irks them. Perhaps it is the "frustration factor" at work that compels a woman to do things that men think are crazy. Being submissive does not come naturally to the human species. Obedience must be learned by suffering the consequences of one's actions. Women do not enjoy constantly being told what to do by their parents, their teachers or by society. In order to get around this law of nature, they cultivate friends. In high school, they roam in "cliques." There are always two different types of cliques in high school. One consists of the popular girls, and other consists of the unpopular girls. The best way to become popular is to do what the popular girls do, and in doing so, one is automatically on some guy's "to date" list, which is the whole idea.

However, the unpopular girls get jealous of the popular girls because they are dateless on weekends. They solve this problem with slumber parties on Friday nights. They stay up late, moan and groan over their dateless state, eat gallons of ice cream, disfigure themselves by winding their hair over metal rollers, slather goo on their faces, and then wonder why their little brothers make fun of them. In their mind, they are doing what the popular girls do to be pretty. After all, isn't the sacrifice worth it in the long run? Then, they line up by the telephone to make crank calls to the one girl in the popular crowd that they all hate because they know that even if they sacrificed ice cream for a year they could never look like her.

In addition, they sit around planning what witty remarks to make should Tom or Joe or Bill ever speaks to one of the unpopular girls. Should I bat my eyelashes? Should I recite a poem? I should definitely compliment him on his haircut. That'll make him notice me. Afterwards, they all whisper together to plan the outfit that lucky girl will wear should he ask her out-when, in reality, he was just being polite because their mothers work together in the school office. By the time he sees her and thinks to speak, she has already planned their date in her mind and the clothes that he should wear when he meets her father.

Today, the young women I see seem to take pleasure in acting out their basest desires in public, getting tattooed, baring their stomachs, legs, breasts in the most extreme faddish manner as if in rebellion of the role they had been assigned to from birth. They willfully brandish a disdainful tongue with vulgar speech, engage in public fighting, and go out to trap men for sex. They have taken the bull by the horns and reinvented themselves as their own heroine, searching for their knight in shining armor who-hopefully-will put an end to their search for the holy grail misnamed "romance."

I shudder to think who my sons might bring home as friends or girlfriends or-God forbid-a wife. When my sons were teens, the idea seemed something to look forward to but times certainly seem to have changed in too short a time. I remember telling my sons how important it is to compliment his date on her clothing and choice of footwear."If she's nuts about you," I said. "It will show in how she dresses. If you normally see her in jeans at work, then you may as well know right now-she will look like an alien from another planet when you go to pick her up on that first date. Be sure to tell her you like her shoes, even if they are the ugliest shoes you have ever seen. Why? Because to a woman, she wants you to notice that she took special care to match her shoes to her clothes. She probably spent all day looking for the perfect pair of shoes, and to a woman, time is money, and she is investing in you."

A few months later, I went out on a date-to a nightclub for dancing. During the first hour, I noticed that the only patrons were women dressed in the skimpiest attire designed to show off their girlish figures, stylishly coiffed hair that reached for the moon and heavily made up faces with ultramarine blue eyeshadow and heavy false eyelashes that looked fake from across the room. While I had no doubt that they were obviously women of the evening, I was pleasantly surprised to notice the care of their well-groomed appearance. Then, my date leaned across and whispered, "Those are not women. They're men." They certainly did not look like any drag queens I had ever seen.

Sure enough, I examined their shapes, noting the slim hips and high-cut tops that showed off glittery powdered shoulders and spike heels that made them tall and lithe, dressed like women out on the prowl. There were six of them who came in together, all sporting tiny handbags slung from thin shoulders. I was fascinated by how real they looked, and as I watched them, I noticed a tremendous change in the atmosphere once the "real" women arrived.

While the trans-gender men occupied one side of the room, the "real" women chose to sit at tables. They arrived in dirty jeans, tee shirts and unkempt hair in groups ranging from three to five and sat down only to pull out cell phones and make calls. Most of them appeared to be at least fifty pounds overweight with triple chins and double stomach rolls. I did not see one woman wearing lipstick. In respons, the "real" women glared at the trans-genders, and the trans-gender men pretended not to notice while they giggled and primped, pulling out dainty golden compacts to powder their noses while their eyes followed the men that entered, one by one.

After twenty minutes of watching the tense byplay and wondering how long it would be before the cat-fights started, men began to enter in droves, lining the walls in groups of ten and more, swilling beer and laughing at their friends antics. The men, at least, looked clean but they were a questionable bunch since most were wearing cowboy hats slung low over their foreheads. When the music started, I waited to see how all these people were going to get together. It was beyond my comprehension why any man would want to pair up with the choices I saw, but who was I to say them nay? Minutes later, the music changed to hip hop, and two enormously fat women approached the dance floor to gyrate-more like bounce-to the music in a visually unappealing rendition of dirty dancing.

The longer we sat there, the more alcohol that was consumed by the male patronage, the more we saw men choose the cross-dressers over the true women to ask for a dance, taken in by appearance and the scent of cologne while the "real" women pretended to seem uninterested in dancing. Few men joined the women, and the tables in which men and women sat were furthest from the blare of the speakers, and they were deep in conversation. Suddenly, one woman jumped up, tossed her drink in another woman's face and stomped out the door with injured dignity written all over her features. The victim leaped up to follow her attacker, shouting obscenities when she was forcibly restrained by the security officers while the two men at the table laughed.

Not long afterward, we departed, appalled by the apparent blurring of male and female roles, forcing us to take stock of the future and reassess the possibilities for our sons. That night, we decided the time had come to face cold, hard facts and convey our feelings with our progeny about the dark, disintegrating underbelly of society. The last thing any mother wants is to have her son involved with a woman, only to find out much later that she is really a he-never mind the social stigma or the current trend of accepting the unacceptable. This involves deeper issues of a betrayal beyond the norm that is not forgivable in the normal sense of the word.

Hmmm. Maybe God knew what he was doing when he made woman, after all. Who else would possibly dive into a school of sharks to warn men they love what dangers lurk ahead?