Trading Places?: You Must be Joking!

Daily Prompt: Trading Places

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a member of the opposite sex for a day? What do you think life would be like?

Just when I finally quit trying to be more like my logical husband, someone asks this ridiculous question. Finally I have embraced that I am a woman who is an intuitive, creative, feeling, perceptive person who is a circular thinker. I am content to drive my husband crazy.

Viva la difference.

When I was little, I thought that boys were loud and generally obnoxious.  Harsh, I know, but all their testosterone driven aggression and rough play was so foreign to my own temperament, that I considered them to be practically an alien race of beings. I have never wanted to morph into a boy or man because being female is an intrinsic part of who I am.

So, please, do not try to tell me that little boys and men are just socially conditioned to behave in a different way than little girls or women. I loudly declare that, even as babies, little boys are intrinsically different from little girls and I celebrate that difference with joy. The fact is that the differences between the sexes is an example of nature  not  nurture.

Since I grew up with only one sister, my boys constantly surprised me. As toddlers, my three sons would stare at wheels turning as they ran toy cars back and forth again and again, totally engaged in this repetitious action. I simply watched with my mouth hanging open. It was an inborn obsession that developed into any machine that had wheels. Tricycles, bicycles, wagons, lawn tractors, cars and trucks were not only driven but also examined in minute detail. The boys turned bikes upside down to check wheels, fill tires and fiddle with the gears. Even more hours went by with my sons’ heads stuck under the hood of a car. My boys also seemed born with the ability to drive anything with an engine. While the girls struggled to learn how to drive cars (just ask their frustrated father), the boys learned effortlessly.

I did try to draw out the ‘feminine’ side of my boys. For example, one day Matthew was about four or five and he asked for his sister’s water proof doll.  I was so pleased. I thought,

“Yes! I have raised a son with nurturing instincts!”

When I came back into the bathroom a few minutes later, the head was off the doll and he was holding the rubber tubing connecting the doll’s mouth to its bottom. Matthew was making loud machine noises as he lowered the head into the water, filled it, slowly lifted his self-made swinging bucket and then swung the head around like a crane, pouring water into a plastic pail. Matthew’s actions startled me. I started to laugh at my son, my efforts to change him and this whole nature versus nurture controversy.

I celebrate the glorious difference between men and women, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. The world would be a better place if women were allowed to help lead business and political spheres without taking on ‘masculine’ characteristics. The world would be kinder and more compassionate.

Viva la difference.