I must warn you, this column contains obnoxious gender stereotypes that used to make me seethe and fume and growl and shoot lasers from my feminist eyeballs. Then I had kids. Sons, to be specific. And the last 11 years of raising sons have left me totally incapable of even pretending that gender stereotypes don’t have a firm basis in fact.
There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. But I am not raising any exceptions. I am raising loud, smelly, grunting boys who think pink is gross and that my need to constantly talk to them and ask them questions and subject them to my annoying attention while they are trying to watch golf or SpongeBob is downright oppressive.
I have been thinking a lot about this lately because I suddenly no longer have any little boys at home. They’ve grown past the stage where I can coerce them into hugging me or shopping with me or listening to me because they are my helpless captives.
My girlfriends – especially my mom, who is my original best friend – are increasingly important to me as I navigate the realities of living, effectively, in a frat house.
We talk a lot, my girlfriends and I. We talk about everything. All the time. We talk about our feelings and our relationships and the choices we make and how they define our lives, and we talk about shoes and sometimes, when we’re out of other stuff to talk about, we even talk about our jobs.