I’m doing marginally better today. Had lunch at Carrburrito’s with David and Mihali, which was nice. It’s been a while since I’ve had some Actual Human Contact\u2122 (aside from immediate family members yesterday). I need to get out of my own head more often.<\/p>\n
In the interest of a fair and balanced journal (like the Fox News Journal!), how about a cursory list of things that it’s good for women to know how to do? I haven’t pondered this yet, at least not in an objective sense–I’ve always thought any list that I would try to compile would end up bearing too close a resemblance to a run-down of attributes I look for in a girl (as far as a relationship possibility). Bit of a conflict of interest there. But here goes, as universal as I can think of. Most girls should be able to:<\/p>\n
– Drive a stickshift
\n– Climb a tree
\n– Play chess
\n– Carry a tune<\/p>\n
I don’t have that many. I’ve been sitting here for five minutes trying to think of another that would fit the paradigm for inclusion. It’s considerably harder to think of them than for the previous list. Hmm. The mental mechanism I use to come up with these is simply to pose myself the question, “How would I complete this sentence for the gender group in question: ‘You never know when you’ll have to…'” Thinking about it in that manner tends to rule out the mundane, run-of-the-mill essentials (like being able to decorate an apartment or cook a square meal), focusing instead on skills that are just nice to have in one’s “tool belt” of capabilities, for occasional, spontaneous situations.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, anything else I should add?<\/p>\n
* * * * * *<\/p>\n
Aaron and I used to always complain to one another that there seemed to be a double-standard between men and women in terms of conversational maintenance–with the women with whom we were acquainted at least. We would compare notes on how we always seemed to be the ones starting and maintaining the conversation, while the girl just responded in kind and didn’t fire back many (or any) questions our way. I think we both got somewhat frustrated that with the majority of girls we knew, if we didn’t spur the conversation along with another question or observation, all talk would eventually cease. I remember trying “experiments” a couple of times where I would just stop cold after I’d received a response to the second or third question (with a polite nod or two to smoothly taper off the discourse), and invariably we’d just stand around silently for two, three, four, five minutes until I fired another question her way.<\/p>\n
This was high school, mind you, matters have somewhat improved, and I certainly don’t consider myself the world’s greatest conversationalist (if anything I feel worse off now than I did then, paradoxically). But I remember it was something Aaron and I would talk about and shake our collective heads over in mild frustration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m doing marginally better today. Had lunch at Carrburrito’s with David and Mihali, which was nice. It’s been a while since I’ve had some Actual Human Contact\u2122 (aside from immediate family members yesterday). I need to get out of my own head more often. In the interest of a fair and balanced journal (like the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}