When my first child was born, I was by no means impartial when it came to preferring one sex over the other: I wanted a girl. I know that some people say things like, “Well, I don’t care, as long as it’s healthy,” and I guess I believe them, but as for me, the only thing I cared about was getting a girl. Girls were all I knew. My only sibling was a sister. My mother’s only sibling was also a sister, who, in turn, had two girls (my only cousins). The idea of a boy was so off-putting to me that, after what I considered a difficult labor ( my midwives, however, informed me that it was normal—easy, even), I was so emotionally drained I was sure that I had just delivered a boy: what else could have caused such grief?
But, in fact, I had had a daughter: Clementine. Clementine was nearly five years old by the time I had my second child, and in the intervening years I had seen enough other children to know that it wasn’t as simple as girls=good, boys=bad. And yet, when people asked me what I was hoping for, I was just as insistent as I had been the first time, maybe even more: I wanted a girl. Of course, what I got, was my son, Clyde.
And I was ok with that. Really. (Well, as ok as anybody can ever be to know that the male population of her house has just doubled. As a friend of mine put it: until she had to share a house with boys, she thought that “cleaning the base of toilet” just meant giving it a light dusting every few months). But no, really, after Clyde was born I adjusted very well to the idea of having another boy in the house. I was ready for the whole t-ball playing thing, the sports-watching thing, the making a gun out of every little thing, thing. I was ready for a boy; what I got, however, was much better than a boy: I got a guy.
Guys are like boys, only to the tenth power. Boys pee standing up. Guys write their names in the snow. Boys play organized sports. Guys invent their own sports with objectives like seeing who can take the hardest punch without blacking out. Boys go out for a few beers. Guys play drinking games with rules like “the first one to throw up has to buy the next round.” Boys will make fool of themselves trying to get the girl; guys will make fools of themselves as well, but without ever realizing there was even a girl in the room (and so will, consequently, get the girl anyway).
I first suspected Clyde was a guy when I signed him up for ice skating lessons, and his favorite part was making fun of the other kids when they fell down. Sometimes he would even fall down himself, he would be laughing so hard at his fellow three year-olds laid out on the ice. When this happened, of course, no matter how hard he would hit the ice himself, he would laugh even harder. What else would you expect? He’s all guy.
It seems to me, in my admittably limited experience, that most boys grow up to be men who go on to do big, important things like creating Enron, the European Union and Viagra. Guys, on the other hand, generally grow up to be, well, guys. They also create big, inportant things like the X Games, Las Vegas and whippets. As far as I can tell, no guy has ever gone on to become the president of the United States, or even the CEO of a big corporation. Clearly, what the world needs now, is a whole lot more guys.
I first suspected Clyde was a guy when I signed him up for ice skating lessons, and his favorite part was making fun of the other kids when they fell down. Sometimes he would even fall down himself, he would be laughing so hard at his fellow three year-olds laid out on the ice. When this happened, of course, no matter how hard he would hit the ice himself, he would laugh even harder. What else would you expect? He’s all guy.