My previous blog focused on which gender makes for a better employee.  While I was thinking about that particular blog, it occurred to me that a major difference between men and women is their competitive nature.  I play pick up basketball on a fairly regular basis and in all my time of playing pick up hoops I can count on two  hands the number of female players that have participated in the thousands of games I have played in.  Truthfully, I can’t imagine there is a single lunch time run on the face of the earth that involves all women.  I just can’t see a bunch of women getting together to play hoops on their lunch break multiple days a week.

On the other hand, I have three different options to play lunch ball as well as two different morning basketball options that typically run from 5:45am to 7am.  The dynamic of each lunch run is different, but all of my basketball runs are comprised of men and men alone.  I was playing on Friday with the Kuyper College group which is some ministers and other guys who have been playing hoops for at least two decades and have bounced from gym to gym.  I have been playing with these guys for about two years and have had some issues with one particular player.  Most people who play have had issues with this particular player, I’m just more vocal about my issues.  Typically I don’t guard this guy but was forced to on Friday.  He lowered his shoulder into me under the hoop trying to score and missed his shot.  Typically he calls a foul on that even though he initiated the contact, but because it was me he didn’t call the foul.

On the other side of the court he called a crap call on me that caused me to lose my mind and verbally attack him.  I was fully aware that I was in an awful mood for no particular reason and that me guarding this guy was going to lead to a potential blow up on the court.  I decided to switch up on defense with someone else to avoid the potential conflict but sir douche bag insisted on guarding me when he was on defense.  Ultimately, I ended up switching back to guarding la douche and actually called a foul on myself that he didn’t.  Maybe at the ripe old age of 41 I’m starting to show signs of maturity.  Regardless, there is a different dynamic in each place I play and I know what I can and can’t do.  When I play at MVP I am completely unbridled, which isn’t a good thing.  At Kuyper and South Christian high school I watch my p’s and q’s but am still the most vocal person on the court when injustices rear their ugly head on the hardwood.

Why do I do this?  Because someone has to do it and I’m just the man for the task.  It’s like coaches who argue with refs, they are laying the ground work for calls to go their way.  The more I chirp the more likely people who are known for making questionable calls will be dissuaded from making those calls.

What I can’t imagine, along with a group of women playing a regular lunch  time game, is those very same women having the occasional disagreement that leads to heated arguments and inappropriate things being said.  Why is that?  I fully realize that there are women out there who are competitive, but not nearly as competitive on the whole as men are competitive.  I was actually playing wii boxing against my five year old and he was kicking my butt and I was getting upset about it.  Ultimately he KO’ed me, I held it together on the outside, but it took every part of my being to not throw the controller across the room.  The next game I KO’ed the shit out of him and it felt good, real good.  I could have gloated but he’s not too terribly competitive and it wouldn’t have affected his mood and the fact that he was a loser would have been completely lost on him.

I attended a poker game yesterday where there were twelve guys playing, yes that’s right twelve guys and no women.  Shirley asked me this morning if the host’s wife participated in the poker festivities.  Seriously?  I’m sorry, but I know of very few women who have any interest in playing poker.  A long time ago I actually brought one of the girls that I shared office space with to play poker in a friendly game where the buy in was only five bucks, it doesn’t get much more friendlier than that, and by the end of the night all of the guys who were playing were completely exasperated because the person I brought, who it was readily evident had no idea what she was doing or a clue about the nuances of betting but she still somehow was cleaning our clocks.  Yesterday, we played from about 3pm until midnight, and it was the typical guy event where we were giving one another shit about everything imaginable because that is what guys do when they get together, at least the guys I associate with.

Now my wife will semi occasionally go out with a group of girls where they typically go out to eat and drink wine.  What do they talk about?  I have no idea, but I’m willing to speculate.  Their kids and their husbands.  You know how often kids and wives were brought up during the course of poker? Two that I can think of and they were by me discussing Shirley with an attorney who knows her.  The first instance was the fact that Shirley asked if I was going to be home for dinner (I left my house at 3pm)  Yeah, sure I’m going to head over to Mark’s play two hands of poker and then come home for dinner.  The second instance was when I played in charity golf outing and Shirley wanted me to get receipts for any mulligans I purchased to use as a tax write off.  Sure thing honey. (I would have talked non stop about my wife and kids but for this blog where they are a primary topic of conversation, all the other guys didn’t discuss their families because they are horrible human beings)

Once there was a text string going on between my wife and her friends about a planned girls night out and my wife’s text appear on our i pad.  Jackpot!  Instantly I joined the conversation pretending to be Shirley and alluded to drinking copious amounts of wine, possible pillow fights in our panties, and ultimately making out with one another.  What I forgot to include was that they should record the entire evening so that their husbands could share in the evenings festivities.  The reality is that men and women not only bring different qualities and characteristics to the workplace, they also bring different qualities when it comes to socialization.  Men and women socialize differently when it is among their own gender.  Furthermore, and I probably can’t get any women to agree to this fact, but guys are just way more fun than  women and that’s why women prefer to attend blended events.

Whenever I attend a guys weekend for golfing or other various activities I am typically asked by Shirley “When do I get to go on a girl’s weekend?”  My response is, whenever you want to is fine with me, fully realizing a girls weekend in theory sounds terrific to her, but in reality is the last thing on earth she wants to participate in.  She plans girls nights out months ahead of time and when the night finally nears she is scrambling for excuses to get out of it.

I’m in the process of trying to plan a spring trip to meet up with all of my college buddies.  The primary purpose of our weekend get aways is to drink beer and act like idiots.  I just can’t imagine women gathering at some remote location to drink beer and act like idiots, its just not in their DNA.  Honestly, I don’t think I can look back on one golf trip with my buddies and say that I regretted going on the trip (even the one in May in Cadillac when there was a snow storm in the middle of our round, or the one where my brother tipped a golf cart on it’s side and I almost lost my middle finger and most of the skin on my forehead as a result)

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy my family vacations equally as much, if not more.  Changing a shitty diaper in a bathroom lavatory, hauling multiple car seats through an airport, adjusting your kid’s sleep schedule to a time zone that is three hours different than yours, sounds like paradise to me!  Just kidding, I love my family vacations, I think my point is, when a women asks you “when do I get to go on my such and such girl’s weekend?”  Call her bluff and tell her anytime she wants to, because chances are, she doesn’t want to.

My last point on the markedly different approach men and women have to life can be seen in how we watch television.  Men are engrossed by the NFL, at least most men are as far as I can tell.  Most men engage in fantasy football where they draft players for their team and they play other teams comprised of other players.  These players have no idea they are on any of these teams and the actually format of these fantasy football leagues is ridiculous and has no real symmetry with actual football.  Furthermore, football has very little action to it and is painful to watch if you are actually present at a game.  What makes football palatable is being able to switch to anther football game when there is nothing happening in the football game you are currently viewing.

The equivalent of the NFL for women seems to be reality  television.  Big Brother, The Bachelor, and Survivor rank right up there with Downton Abbey (which is an actual drama and not a reality show as far as I can tell) as Shirley’s favorite shows  to watch.  Can you imagine a group of women getting together for a reality show draft.  “Ok, Barb, we are meeting at 6pm to at Buffalo Wild Wings for the draft, have you done your fantasy rankings yet?  If I get the first pick in the draft I’m taking Mark from the bachelor.”  Better yet, imagine if there was a particular day of the week that reality television was on the air and women spent the entire day checking their phones and computers to see how they were faring in the reality tv fantasy matchup?

I gave up on fantasy football because I realized it was a complete and utter waste of time, wives, I would suggest you encourage your husbands do the same, it was one of the best and most liberating things I have ever done.  Now if I can just take the next step of getting rid of sports all together there’s no telling how awesome my life could be.

Finally, what truly differentiates men from women is this fact.  My wife would never sit through Sunday Night or Monday Night Football hoping to get lucky, nor would I insist on watching football if that was on the table.  However, I’m willing to endure whatever god awful television show if I’m going to be rewarded or even if it’s just a remote possibility.  When you break it all down men are truly pathetic creatures.