Does This Make Me One of the Guys?

Beer + Pizza + Cursing + Belching + Playing Video Games = Male Fun

Tonight I spent three hours of my life trying to learn how to operate a XBox joystick thingy, while two of my male friends had their eyes fixated on the screen, and their hands moving furiously on their own joysticks. (Okay, so I don't mean that how it sounds.) I think men are born with a gene that allows them to intuitively make an electronic control an extension of their own bodies. Call me crazy, but I cannot possibly control a CGI's movement and direction while trying to navigate mazes, pick up flags, drive cars, throw grenades, shoot guns, and not kill your own people all at the same time. There I was thinking I had good hand-eye coordination all my life.

It was fun though. Breaking the Friday-night routine, or any routine for that matter, is quite refreshing. You remember that other people do exist, and that you can possibly hang out with people outside of the regular clip. It was very fun and diverting, to say the least. Especially when the visit was mingled with the ramblings (and expletives, both Jamaican, Trinidadian and Standard) of their hilariously cute and funny drunken roommate.

I have to say that the 'gamer' is not really my type, per se, but they are cool people (for the most part). So although I may not marry one, I'd hang out with one any day.

Now that I'm one of the guys...how's about letting me in on some of the guy talk?

Blast from the Past...

When someone from your past comes back into your life suddenly and inexplicably, almost as suddenly time travels backward and, for an instant, you become the person you were then. In my case, the disillusioned, heartbroken girl who, for the first time in a long time, got to breathe a breath of fresh air. That fresh air was on Store Bay in Tobago, and it was 6'2" tall with dreadlocks. It was there that he gave me, unasked, the thing I wanted most in the world: a hair-tie.

There are some people with whom you just click. Talking is easy, liming is easy...being is easy. We just clicked. After that ensued arguably three of the most enjoyable consecutive months of my life.

Needless to say, I'm not the person I was then...as good or bad as that may be. Neither is he. What's amazing however, is that after three years we still click. We can still talk and 'be' just as easily. Cool people are hard to find. I dedicate this entry to you, my fresh air of three years ago.

They say every woman ought to have a juicy past. Thanks for three months of juice.

Rock Me To Sleep...

BACKWARD, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for to-night!

- Elizabeth (Akers) Allen. 1832–1911

Babies know what they want. They are driven by the basest of things. If they're hungry, they cry, then they eat. If they're wet, or uncomfortable, they cry, and eventually get relief. When they want to sleep, they pass out...be it in their own comfortable cribs, or in the middle of a circus.

As we get older, what we want isn't necessarily so clear. Oh, that it would be! Things get progressively more complicated. Should they? That's what everyone says. But I think we had the right idea when we were babies. Then again, when we cried, someone was there to feed us. When we were wet someone was there to change us. When we needed to rest, all we had to do was close our eyes. Now, if we're hungry, we have to find food. This most times means having money, which means getting a job that allows you to buy food, which means getting an education so you can be employed, which means studying hard in school, which means finding the motivation to study - which was, oh yeah...food? Doing those things generally means sacrificing our sleep and comfort.

All very confusing stuff.

Maybe we will figure it all out when we're old, and in diapers again. Then we can ring a bell when we're hungry, push a button when we want to be more comfortable, and close our eyes when we want to sleep.

Right now, I want to be a child again. Just for tonight.