Contradiction of Pre-Mature Chivary
August 29th, 2005 -- Posted in people | 3 Comments »It was an age when I first explored interaction with the opposite gender beyond home and school. And it was the first time interaction was without obligation. These girls weren’t daughters of my parents’ friends, nor were they children of some neighbors whom my aunt was asked to baby-sit. They were friends of friends and were equally curious about those of my gender. These were church friends of my friend, to be precise. Shy as I’ve been genetically prophesized, I tend to observe and listen more than I spoke.
At this pre-puberty age, conversations in groups with girls mostly include debates on which sex is better and which is stupid. Each gender side had no more knowledge of the opposite than the other do, which were mainly from interactions with their own siblings (adults like parents and aunties/uncles do not count as they were men/women). Each were trying to outwit the other, yet silently they yearned to learn more about each other. Being a boy, I listened more than the girls spoke. I listened to the emphases from both sides.
The girls always outwitted the boys. The girls seemed to have this unprecedented ability to remember every weak statements made and they’d always corner the boys’ words up to their own mouth. The boys, on the other hand, were babbering from half-truth half fantasy sprouting randomly from their skulls. Being a boy who listened from both sides, I couldn’t help but agree that the boys should have listened more than they talked.
“So what do you think, Allen?” asked one of the girls. And before I could answer, I realized it wasn’t a question. “Boys are all alike. You’d only talk and never listen. Hadn’t your mom thought you that you’d learn more when you listen before you…” It was just another planned question directed to invoke another debate.
So that’s how I became a seemingly quiet person. My mom had always told me when I was young how I can look so deep in my thoughts. At this pre-puberty age none of these girls could see what my mom saw. I was thinking and analyzing deeper than the girls thought, which explained my quiet moments in conversations. When I progressed to BGRs a few years later, my short-lived episodes with each kind of girls allowed me more opportunities to observe how they outwitted guys so easily. I realized that most did so by quoting from books and magazines they read. While boys are burying themselves in comic books and magazines full of naked women, these young girls were doing their homework reading on relationships and boys’ mentality. So they DO know how the boys think, from pre-reading. It’s no wonder they’re always quick to pick what catches the boys’ tongues.
One girlfriend I was with for over 4 years was spending all that 4 years trying to psych me into practicing chivalries on her. Sure it was a good thing to start behaving like a gentleman since chivalries had always been more popular, but at the back of my mind I had the feeling that chivalries can be quite a bite on a guy’s self-ego from time to time. It wasn’t until I was so brainwashed and so used to being the gentleman that I started to question how chivalries works with feminism. My girlfriend, just like any young girls of my time, were starting to proclaim themselves feminists after witnessing adult women in their families getting jilted and hurt by their men.
“One condition for us to be together,” she told me once when we were strolling downtown, ” is that you will never stop me from working. I want to be given the freedom to develop myself into who I want to be. I want to be successful and not depend on any man.” Such strong words from an adolescence girl not understanding the implications she just made. I let her carry on with her self-proclamation, and being the boy who listened more than girls spoke, I was listening attentively that I had to be nudged in the ribs to open a door for her.
As I grew older, the boys start to get to serious stuffs like alcohol and cars, though they knew they weren’t of age yet. With the wallet size growing with the boys’ appetite for men’s lifestyle, the girls spoke less and began to see their boys becoming manlike. Realizing that boys were starting to be more generous when they rabble less and doll up more, the girls decided to play along with the guys’ growing ego. Still the boy who listened more than the girls spoke, I was ever accused of being still a boy and not yet a man. With my allowance that hadn’t grown a bit for the past 3-4 years, I had difficulty with understanding what makes a man in the eyes of such girls. My then girlfriend was not very different from the general sense of girls who want men more than boys. Starting to don short skirts and hot pants, I noticed her elation from wolf whistles even when I was next to her.
“You should at least show more confidence and speak up. I would love it more if you’d argued more with me when we quarrel, rather than just keep quiet,” and the lecture led on to an even longer moment of silence on my part, which made her even more agitated. Funny how she could come to this after speaking of how I’ve been such a gentleman and such a good listener, yet a good listener who waits for his speaker to complete her sentence can turn into a meek frog who dared not croak in her eyes.
So what do girls want? It had been over a decade since I’d questioned these. Though I do not see such girlish behavior in my child-like wife, I still do find such contradictions in more matured versions. Women of my age who were girls at that time do still talk about how they believe very strongly in one thing but expects the opposite to happen to them. Being a boy who listens more than girls spoke, I still have difficulties understanding these girls.
This does not apply to ALL girls, just THESE girls I used to date.
