Toys and Sexuality

It’s been quite a while since my last blog so forgive me if I've lost a step or two. Being a full-time parent and full-time employee certainly takes its toll as I find myself exchanging the written rants for the verbal ones. But today, I had a surprisingly profound conversation with my mother-in-law which may have actually changed the way I raise my daughter from here on out.

Now, anybody who knows me or has read my writings knows that I am a fairly strong conservative. I’m the kind of guy who, like Archie Bunker, longs for the days when “...girls were girls and men were men.” And once upon a time, not all that long ago, America was a very conservative country.

Pick up a history book or, for that matter, watch an old movie. From the first days of their lives, girls were raised to learn how to be ladies. They were taught to be well-mannered, submissive and, yes, feminine. Boys were brought up to be tough, strong and dry in the eyes at all times.

What happened next is a bit of a mystery.

Sure, I can point a few fingers at possible catalysts that served to wreak havoc on this male/female dynamic (i.e.: television and the liberal media), but I couldn’t say for sure how many things contributed to creating the ultra f**ked up society in which we currently live.

As I just mentioned, I think it all really started with television and, more specifically, with a certain feisty wife who dared to stand up to her obese, bus-driving husband. His “Pow, right in the kisser” threats fell upon apathetic ears and people laughed their asses off because it was so… well… different. Alice Kramden wasn't a submissive TV wife - not by a long shot. Her posture, language and attitude were gruff, as was the pitch of her voice. She barely even sounded feminine... and given Ralph's large frame, one might have wondered if Ralph could have even taken his own wife in a fight.

So, what’s my point in all of this? My point is that, for YEARS now, I’ve been telling people that sexuality (...like most everything in this world) is LEARNED and not something with which we’re born. Yes, we’re born with sex organs and, as we grow, our hormones run on auto pilot for a while, but we still need to learn what sex is all about, how it works, etc. If I was wrong on this, there wouldn’t be so much as one “how to” book or video on anything related to sex.

Yes, I’m a guy. Yes, I’m into chicks and yes, common sense drives the vast majority of us to ultimately seek out members of the opposite sex, but who’s to say how many of us straight guys wouldn’t be gay if raised in a completely different environment? If same sex relations were the norm and heterosexuality, the deviation from that norm, maybe the majority of people in the world would be gay.

Which brings me to my issue.

My daughter recently turned two years old and, from the time she was like seven months old, she would play with those wooden train sets every time we went to the Children’s Museum. Sure, she’d play in other areas as well, but the train table was never missed. At present, she’s a HUGE Thomas the Tank Engine fan and, yes, as a parent who wants to nurture her interests, I’ve done a few things to bring Thomas closer to home.

I downloaded a bunch of Thomas episodes, showed her a few of them and bought a few of the more popular trains (Thomas, Gordon, James, Percy, etc). Now, not a day goes by where she doesn’t literally drag me to the computer, ask me to sit down and say to me, “Daddy! Choo choo! Watch... choo choo!” to let me know that she’s yearning for her daily Thomas fix. And for her birthday, I gave her the wooden train set table that she runs to whenever we’re at that famous toy store with the giraffe who yearns to be a certain kind of kid.

My wife and mother keep telling me that these are toys that only boys should be playing with and I’ve been calmly waving them off in a “what harm could it do” kind of way. Well, here’s the harm. The harm is that the trains could very quickly turn to planes… or Transformers… or action figures… or Star Wars gear – toys that are traditionally crafted with boys in mind. The Thomas trains just might be her gateway toy to increasingly boyish toys.

With such toys comes the desire to play with like-minded children and before you know it, she's only gonna want to play with boys because she'll have so little in common with the girls. Yes, those girls... who are having invisible tea parties, playing with dolls, cooking pretend food in their "kitchens" and imagining themselves as the princesses they always see on their toys... won't want to have much to do with the girl who plays with boys' toys.

I happen to know of a couple of mothers who so adamantly refuse to conform to societal and gender norms that they go out of their way to dress their girls in anything but pink. They encourage these girls to play with whatever toys they want. One girl plays with toys from both gender categories, but the other girl is decidedly tomboyish and, lo and behold, she has zero female friends.

Zero.

Now, I’m not gonna sit here and tell you these girls are future lesbians, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. I believe that a big reason why we are attracted to the opposite sex as adults is because we spent our entire childhoods in closest proximity to members of the same sex, building brotherhoods and sisterhoods with our friends and sharing common interests. If you’re reading this and you 100% disagree with me, that’s totally cool because I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little professional data to back up anything I’m saying here. For me, however, this is more than just a gut feeling.

When the opposite sex is different from you and your friends, they lend themselves to a degree of mystery and intrigue. The “Vive la differénce” spirit ignites as we boys catch our first quick glimpse at a girl's smooth, bare legs. As boys, me and my friends got curious about girls because they were absolutely nothing like us, yet they seemed to enjoy themselves just as much as we did. I mean, there’s a whole “sexuality” known as bi/curious for a reason. Everybody's curious about sex at some point in their lives, whether it be straight or gay.

For me, I just couldn't figure out how girls could have such a great time without so much as one Transformer in their hand. A life without Optimus Prime and Megatron was, for me, a life not worth living. I had my fellow dudes as friends, we did male things, played war games, superhero games and swapped action figures from He-Man to Star Wars to Transformers to G.I. Joe. It’s what boys of my generation did. Ask any thirty something straight guy if they played with any of the four groups of toys I just mentioned. I’d bet my house that 100% of the guys surveyed will have had experience playing with at least one of those four if not ALL of those four.

There wasn’t a miniature tea set, Barbie or Cabbage Patch Kid ANYWHERE in our vicinity and I’m reasonably sure that we’d have kicked the ever-loving sh*t out of any boy in our group if they DID have anything like that. Once in a while, in between trench battles and galactic Empire showdowns, we’d spy a group of girls playing with girly things, having girly conversations and bursting out in girly giggles. We swore them off and spoke of cooties, but honestly, we were all secretly intrigued.

By the time we hit Junior High, the toys started to disappear and we started looking at legs instead. A girl would walk up a row of stairs and if she was wearing even a moderately short skirt, you can bet that at least a few dudes were scoping out the goods. In my senior year of high school, a female friend once asked me about our fascination with boobs and legs. At seventeen, the best answers I could come up with were "They look great" and, in the case of boobs, "Because we don't have any."

At 34, I doubt my answers would be a whole hell of a lot more profound.

We boys weren’t at all confused about our sexualities because most of us were brought up in stable “one mom/one dad” households and were given a pretty clear path to how boys became men and how we should never, EVER hit girls no matter what. Nowadays, couples are splitting up at the first signs of trouble and leaving their children in broken homes. Kids are being brainwashed by their ultra-liberal parents to believe that conformity is a form of oppression and that hugging trees is more important than hugging your parents.

Some kids see their nannies more than they see their own parents and there are no strong role models for them to emulate. It comes as no surprise to me that some people's compasses are a bit off-North. For me, part of being a boy involved my dad taking me aside and telling me that sometimes a boy has to stand up for himself and kick a few asses. Sure, work to resolve the conflict amicably, but if it doesn’t work and you have to belt him, lay the bastard out. Then, Dad gave me some pointers and we bonded as males.

Nowadays, lawsuits appear shortly after a mild bitchslap and ultra-pacifist hippie, hummus-eating parents pussify their kids to the point that a slight frost in the morning will send them into a hissy fit of pansy-ass proportions.

So, I’ve switched gears a bit. Sure, my daughter gets to keep her Thomas trains, but her birthday gifts also included a Mommy & Me doll and a small baby stroller, complete with a pack of mini-diapers and mini baby bottle. And I’m happy to report that she loves this doll tremendously, changes her diaper often, remembers to feed her and even tucks her in to sleep – all with virtually no direction from us.

And yes, the vast majority of her clothing is either pink, red or lavender. We also just bought her another winter coat last week. It’s a very warm, magenta jacket that she loves about as much as we do. Our daughter often sees her mom and me together, giving each other loving attention, hugs, etc., and I really believe this will benefit her a great deal. Coming from a solid and loving home will teach and nurture her in ways that no amount of book-reading ever could.

Lastly, I'm aware that there are some “experts” in the field who believe that one can be born as a homosexual, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that “nurture” has a WHOLE LOT more to do with sexuality than “nature.” And I'll actually back up this claim, citing Volume 146, Issue 20, Page 95 of the November 13, 1995 issue of TIME in an article entitled “New Evidence of a ‘Gay Gene’” by Anastasia Toufexis.

An exerpt from the article reads:

“"Gay gene" researcher Dean Hamer was asked by Scientific American if homosexuality was rooted solely in biology. He replied: "Absolutely not. From twin studies, we already know that half or more of the variability in sexual orientation is not inherited. Our studies try to pinpoint the genetic factors...not negate the psychosocial factors."”

Homosexuals might not necessarily have chosen their sexual tendencies, but they did pick it up somewhere along the line after they left the womb – not while they were in it. Furthermore, they choose to ACT on those tendencies, so don't make it like someone's got a gun to their heads, making them have gay sex.

Anyway, upon finishing up this conversation with my mother-in-law, I resolved to give my daughter more pink clothes, tea sets, dolls and dresses..... not to mention a very loving and stable home.

Heroes of Mediocrity

I have a near fourteen month old daughter and it’s my obligation as a father to endure mind-numbing programs once in a while for the sake of her education. Obviously, watching an entire program that centers around, say, counting… won’t exactly entertain me, but I do it for my daughter’s benefit (…and at my wife’s behest).

And since pretty much everything I enjoy on television is violent or otherwise inappropriate for my little princess, TV pretty much sucks these days. As it stands now, football is my only refuge… and with Super Bowl XLII coming up in just a couple of days, TV’s gearing up to suck even more once the season is officially over.

So, my weekday mornings are all about the Disney Channel. My daughter sits mesmerized and I silently criticize everything in my mind. Here’s what I’ve figured out so far.

Winnie the Pooh and Tigger are absolute retards, the Wiggles are gay, the Doodlebops are gayer, Handy Manny never pays for anything, Mickey Mouse is narcissistic, the Little Einsteins need my help with everything... and every ass-clown over the age of nine in Higglytown is a f**king hero.

Things like echos, whistling, melting snow, loose teeth and growing flowers really baffle the sh*t out of Tigger and Pooh and, if not for the little girl (who’s always the one to figure sh*t out first), these retards would probably be dead by now. And yet, no show annoys me more than Higglytown Heroes.

Holy sh*t! Mediocrity is celebrated no more fervently than in Higglytown Heroes; a computer animated show. Imagine a city full of living Matryoshka nesting dolls with the plotlines centering around four kids and a talking squirrel (…all of whom can nest into whoever the next largest kid happens to be). Now, when I think about heroes, I imagine Superman saving Metropolis from Doomsday or, for real-life heroes, I think of the rescue workers of 9/11.

What I don’t think of are hall monitors, mechanics, physical therapists, plumbers, gardeners, artists, waitresses, librarians, window washers, museum curators and cows.

I sh*t you not, I said “cows.” I mean, holy sh*t, EVERYBODY’S a f**king hero on this show!

Then again, I figure that everybody is a hero in these kids’ eyes because all four of them are f**king stupid. Seriously, they can’t figure anything out for themselves and it’s truly pathetic. The girl of the group comes up with all of these crazy-ass ideas you'd swear she could only get from a seriously f**ked up acid trip. The best part is that, in every episode, her theory of the day is shot to hell by a f**king squirrel. And this squirrel delivers an even bigger "f**k you" when she winks at the camera before cutting "Twinkle" down because even a primate knows how ridiculous this girl's ideas are.

And not everything that they fret over is even a big deal. Remember the “cow hero” I alluded to a second ago? Care to know how a cow could possibly be a hero? Well, the disaster for this particular episode was a farmer’s inability to make ice cream because he didn’t have any cream. One kid (in a stroke of pure brilliance) suggested that they could use ketchup in place of cream to make their ice cream. As you can imagine, they’re not exactly setting the bar very high.

Based on how easily these kids are stumped, I can only conclude that they’re borderline retarded. The cow provides the cream necessary to make the ice cream and the day is saved. If I were a nesting doll on this show and the four-eyed kid started fretting “What are we gonna do?” like he always does, I’d probably smack him upside his head and tell him to stop sniffing markers in class.

People Who Need to Get Punched in the Head

I’m in a venting mood and I don’t care who I piss off today, so here’s a list of people who, at the very least, need to get punched in the head:

1.) The guy on the side of the road who waits until you’re almost on top of him before he starts crossing the street, thus forcing you to slam on your brakes. That lame brained move alone deserves a jab or two to the cranium. God help him if, after your brake pads are toast, he then decides he wants to move with the speed of a tortoise with a cement shell, all the while gawking at you as if your very existence is somehow shocking to him. At this point, you know he’s just trying to be an asshole, but he’s an asshole with a false sense of entitlement who may one day try that sh*t with someone who doesn’t give a rat’s ass if this clown makes it from Point A to B or if he becomes a f**king hood ornament.

2.) The woman who, as she is about to get into her car, clearly sees that you have your turn signal on and are waiting for that spot, yet still takes like 45 minutes to get her sh*t together before she can pull out of her parking space. With people like that, I just wanna open up her door, smack her upside the head, tell her to get her ass in gear and stop wasting minutes of my life while she tries shining sh*t by applying make-up to her horrendous face.

3.) I’d reserve my next skull punch for any parent who becomes indignant and outraged when a teacher tells him that his kid is less than a model student, instead of addressing the ever so slight possibility that this could be a parenting problem. I once read a story about a preschool kid who couldn’t get through the day without biting all of her fellow preschoolers. After several unsuccessful attempts by teachers to curb her behavior, the teachers decided to call the parents in. Upon hearing this news, not only did the parents pull their girl out of the school, they sued the preschool! Because clearly, their daughter’s Cujo-like behavior had to have been the teachers’ fault. Twenty bucks says that when this girl gets home from school, she’s probably thrown into a cage with one of those ball-bearing water dispenser thingies that hamsters lick when they’re thirsty. But nope! They sued the school. Alrighty then. Anything it takes to avoid coming to grips with the fact that they’re sh*tty parents, I suppose.

4.) The person (usually female) who rats out a minimum wage-earning schlub to his or her manager after receiving less than exemplary service needs to have a face-to-fist meeting with me immediately if not sooner. The poor bastard’s behind a register (or deli counter), or perhaps waiting tables in a greasy-spoon, making like four dollars an hour. Isn’t his existence sad enough without you making it worse? Did you ever think for one minute that maybe this is the best job he’s capable of attaining at this time in his life and that perhaps, his job ain’t all smiles and lollipops? If you have that much of a problem with the service, don’t go tattling to his manager! Apply for a job! His job! Work right alongside of him…. and show him what being employee of the month is all about. Otherwise, shut the f**k up.

5.) The host of pretty much every moderately upscale restaurant I’ve ever been to who always seems to be a guy and always seems to have a princess fairy lisp going on. If you insist on having your midnight romps with Cecil the Wonder Schlong plowing your ass like Interstate 95 after a blizzard, that’s your business. But when you’re speaking to regular ol’, “I don’t exist just to piss my parents off” people, leave the lisp on the night stand next to the body glitter and the KY. In other words, talk like a man.

6.) I’ve got a special edition uppercut reserved for this next group: The couple who just can’t figure out how to get to a movie or a sporting event on-time, so they arrive after the game has started and wind up walking all over you to get to their seats. If you’re like me, you do that “hover slightly over your seat” maneuver which gives these late arrivals all of about three centimeters more room so that when they still manage to step all over you and slam their asses in your face, you wind up just plopping back down on your seat in disgust. Plus, no matter how much room you try to give them, they still take like three minutes to get through, all the while blocking your view and pissing you off. This is usually the same group of ass-wads who either can’t get enough of the vendors’ fourteen dollar beers or did get enough and now need to use the bathroom every five minutes, which means playing the “grind up on my f**king knees” tango each and every damn time they have to leave or return to their seats.

7.) Next on my sh*t list, the driver who sees that my turn signal is on and that I’m trying to get into his lane, yet insists on driving just close enough so that if I tried to cut in, I’d get clipped. This is usually the same asshole who, when I finally do manage to squeeze in after I’ve had my turn signal on for an hour, is lightning quick to beep his horn. Too bad he wasn’t nearly as quick at being courteous. Prick. I think it’d take more than one punch in the head to even that score.

8.) Anybody who’s pulling disability because they’re “depressed” doesn’t only need a good punch in the head. They need an education on just what it means to have a depressing life. For example, if you find yourself alone in your car, crying into your hands, punching the steering wheel and screaming at the rain, you’re not depressed – you’re just stupid… and you’ve got nothing to be depressed about.

Why? Because you have a steering wheel to punch and rain to scream at.

Try spending some time in a country where tanks and guns take precedence over food and water and the natives’ idea of a refreshing drink is licking moderately moist sand because the climate’s too damn dry for rain to exist. While you’re at it, hang out with a few emaciated kids and fly-ridden goats as you hunt for scorpions to eat because that’s all there f**king is. Then return to your “depressing” life back home and voilà - you’re f**king cured! It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than pumping thousands of dollars’ worth of meds into you while a heavily overpaid psychiatrist lies your moronic ass on a couch to discuss your “feelings” and how much your parents messed you up.

Cry me a river, numbnuts!

Nobody who gets to collect monthly checks for doing nothing all day but sit at home, knocking back bon-bons and watching Jerry Springer qualifies as a candidate for depression as far as I’m concerned. So, get up off your ass and get a job. I’ll sleep better knowing that my tax dollars are being used to fix f**ked up roads as opposed to your scarred psyche.

9.) And speaking of permanently scarring your children, if you’re a grandmother and you’re still in your forties, you have absolutely no business giving me tips on how to be a mature, responsible parent. Because for you to have attained grandmother status in your forties, it either means that you got knocked up way too young or worse – you raised a f**ked kid who got knocked up or did the knocking up way too young. Either way, it doesn’t bode well for you, so keep your mouth shut if you’re not particularly fond of angry thumps to the skull. And do NOT tell me that you don’t have any control over what your children do unless you’re prepared to punctuate that sentence with “…because I suck as a parent and never bothered to even try and instill him/her with a moral compass when I had the chance.”

Good parenting is like building a house. If you build a shoddy foundation, the house has no chance of standing on its own. If you build a solid foundation, but don’t stick around to oversee construction of the house, odds are the house’ll get f**ked up along the way and you’ll wind up needing to flick a light switch if you wanna flush the toilet. A good parent is someone who works hard to build that solid foundation, then oversees construction of the house, giving advice when needed. My wife and I have every intention on raising our daughter in the word of God and making sure that, by the time she’s old enough to choose her own path in life, she’ll make the right choices. In the meantime, if you can boast of holding a grandchild before your child can boast of holding a high school diploma, keep your pearls of wisdom to yourself. Because going to you for parenting advice would be like something that sucks asking something else that sucks about how not to suck.

And since I’m not really pissed off at anybody else today, I’ll just reread my blog about The Quiet Car, think about Window Bitch and envision her on the business end of that tenth punch.

What's With the Lisp?

I’m probably setting myself up for a lot of hate mail with this next blog, but this is a question that’s literally been bugging me for years and I’d like to at least throw it out there.

Now, anybody who knows me well enough will tell you that I’m not much of a gay advocate.

Do I hate gays? No.
Am I homophobic? No.
Do I have an opinion about homosexuality? Definitely.

It will be all I can do to stop myself from listing all of the reasons I have for standing against gay marriage, but I really will try to refrain because that’s not the point of this blog. Invariably, some gay advocate will mock the sanctity of heterosexual marriage by invoking the Britney Spears example, so I’ll quickly say the following:

Every God-created thing that exists on this planet has the potential to be abused by stupid people. Whether it’s marriage, sex, food, water or whatever, humans have the potential to ruin good things if they’re not cautious. That’s life.... and that's another blog for another day.

For the past couple of years now, I’ve dared to ask the questions that the majority of Americans eschew when it comes to homosexuality. Let’s take my most recent adventure as an illustration.

Three guys are walking up Tremont Street in Boston, just past the Red Hat bar. I’m walking behind them en route to the Kinsale restaurant to meet my wife for dinner. These guys are just shootin’ the sh*t about their regular mundane jobs and all of a sudden, my gay-dar starts beeping. I don’t know these guys from a hole in the wall, so why do I get the strong suspicion that they’re gay?

Undaunted, I tapped one of them on the shoulder to get his attention. He turned to face me and here’s what I said:

“Excuse me. You don’t have to answer this question if you don’t want to, but I was wondering if you three guys are gay or straight?”

One of the guys giggled incredulously, one just kinda looked at me as if I’d just eaten a worm and the third guy said, “Well, not that it’s any of your business, but we’re all gay.”

I said, “Thanks. That’s all I needed to know.” and that was the end of the conversation.

So, how did I know they were gay? They weren’t dressed flamboyantly, yet clothing was a factor. They didn’t have hair down to their asses, yet hairstyle was a factor. And they weren’t discussing gay topics, yet their speech gave them away instantly.

Here’s how I figured the not-so-mysterious mystery out:

CLOTHING: No, they weren’t wearing long, glittery robes with neon lights flashing the words, "Mrs. Pitt" and no, they weren’t wearing ass-less chaps, high heels, tummy shirts or anything of that sort. In fact, they were dressed very well; as if they'd just walked out of the f**king Abercrombie & Fitch Fall catalog. Simply put, the Queer Eye dudes might be snappy dressers, but normal heterosexual guys tend to relax what little fashion sense they might have. They don’t care about matching shoe color with hair color or what color shirt goes well with their eyes. With some dudes, just getting them to wear clean underwear and socks is an accomplishment.

Point of Fact: We of the "woman-banging" variety don’t generally tuck in our shirts, wear stylish shoes or don suit jackets unless we’re waiting to get into a nightclub to go chick-hunting.

These three dudes were walking up Tremont Street with style and panache… on a Wednesday evening.

HAIR: This was another indicator. All three of these guys had slick hairdos, glistening with gel. Now, unless they were just coming from a Blaine Hair Salon photoshoot, there’d be no real reason to be looking like that. Most women seem to prefer a clean-cut guy with hair that isn’t sticky or crunchy, partly because they can run their fingers through the man’s hair and partly because it isn’t 1986.

VOICE: This is the part that bugs me the most. Why is it that so many gay men speak with a lisp? I used to think it was a stereotype against dudes who were a little light in the loafers, but as I’ve observed time and time and time again, the gay lisp isn’t a rare phenomenon. It’s hard to describe to someone who’s never heard it. I can’t really call it effeminate because even women don’t sound like this. I’d love to do a survey of 1,000 men who have these lisps and find out what percentage of these men suffer from a legitimate speech impediment and how many of them are just plain gay.

But aside from lisping, there’s a certain way that many gay men speak that’s, well…. just not very manly. I’m inclined to say that it takes a deliberate effort to speak in this fluffy way; almost as a verbal badge of honor for the ones who just accept their gayness and don’t make any apologies for it. Maybe I’m wrong and if I am, feel free to speak out, but I truly don’t believe that guys are born with this manner of speech. And before I get pelted with bitch slaps, let me just say that I’m perfectly aware that there are plenty of gay guys out there who look, act and sound just like regular guys. I’m not talking about these guys. I’m talking about the ones who sound like that gay Mexican dude from “The Birdcage.” I’m talking about those guys in the movie “The Rules of Attraction” who rush their gay friend to the ER. That whole limp-wristed, lispy sub-culture of guys who, through their speech, lets the world know that they’d rather get a lap dance from Jesse Metcalfe than Eva Longoria.

My point is that, if you believe you’re gay and there’s no other way for you, that’s one thing. Wear fashionable clothes if you want. Grease up your head to the point where you can slide it through a keyhole if it makes you happy. But for goodness sake, lose the f**king lisp, will ya? Yeah, it makes you sound gay, and that’s probably the whole point, but it also makes you sound really f**king stupid. So, butch it up a little, huh? Seriously.