Not to piss off any Gilette protesters, but could we start raising boys to be more civil, logical, moral, cleaner, less angry, and more cautious? Because I was driving down a main road and a boy no older than 10 pushed his brother into the street in front of me. I managed to stop before hitting the child with my car. I beeped my horn and said don't do that, to which the brother who was pushed and almost got hit by a car screamed "we can do whatever we want".
Now this is not the first time that a child had done something like this. A couple years ago my dad fell and broke his ribs, puncturing his lung. My sister was driving us to the hospital following the ambulance. The kids riding their bike in the street stayed in front of our car on purpose. My sister passed them and said something like "be careful on the road" (she is much more patient than me even in situations as stressful as that) and the kid shrilly shrieked the same words back.
Both of these young boys felt superior to thousands of pounds of metal and plastic driven by an engine with a person behind the wheel who, for all they know, isn't even paying attention.
The fact that I am by no means an expert on anything does not stop me from thinking that young boys like these, who display entitlement and instant screamng response may grow up to be like the people I deal with in my own living space.
With this we add in the topic of male rage.
Fast forward to college, and then to this week where I probably almost got punched with my pants down. I have been living in a dorm for over two years now and I absolutely hate a lot of my experiences with the disgusting and angry ass holes I live near. Luckily the two roommates that I have lived with were great and we were friends the whole way through. My neighbors, however, are a different story. My first neighbor was really only inconsiderate. He made the hall reak of bad cigarettes and fooled around with his girlfriend in the public bathroom and public showers. He upset me but did not drive me mad the way my second neighbor did.
My second neighbor did not have classes. At least I don't think he had classes. If he did, he must have left for them after I left for mine and got back before I got back, because any time that I was home, he was screaming at the top of his lungs at fortnite. I never cared for fortnite but because of this one boy, I have a complete distain for it. If he wasnt angrily screaming at his game, he was arguing with or having squeaky arythmic sex with his girlfriend who usually just sat and watched him scream. Living across the hall from this and living next door to my Resident Advisor and seeing nothing be done about his behavior was infuriating.
I have had three RAs in my college career, and the first two did not do much about enforcing rules other than quiet hours after 11 PM. I now understand why. This new third one is doing his best but people who were raised to be inconsiderate and are now filled with hormones and are taught to deal with that in unhealthy ways do not care about signs put up requesting that you flush the toilet or clean up after yourself. In fact, questioning their rude and inconsiderate choices is often met with anger.
Now for the aforementioned pants down story. If you can not tell I am a little bit fed up with dorm life. I am surrounded by young men who are no longer subject to consequences (if they ever were). I was on the toilet one day and someone came into the bathroom and used the stall on the other end. There are three and the middle one had been used and purposefully filled with toilet paper to the point where it could not be flushed, so the room already smelled pretty bad. This boy did not flush or wash his hands. As I often lack a filter, as I heard the door close a "not even gonna flush, huh?" Escaped my mouth. I guess he must have heard it because the bathroom door burst open and I heard him ask "you say somethin?" Now this wasn't the normal use of the phrase indicating that I was simply not heard, this was the use that often follows "wounded male honor" and precedes a fight. I being someone who has never been in a fight period, let alone with my pants around my ankles, kept quiet. After a moment I heard the toilet flush and the door close so I suppose I got through to him or embarrassed him slightly.
The biggest problem in this story isn't how dirty this young man was (though that is a big issue), it was how quickly he was ready to turn on a stranger for something wrong that he had done. God forbid you question the decisions of an inflated ego filled with testosterone even if he does something he knows he shouldn't.
This was really supposed to only be the first paragraph but if you've made it this far I suppose that the message is that straight women who want kids should make sure that their man is a decent human being who looks both ways, flushes the toilet and washes his hands. Men be decent human beings who flush the toilet and wash their hands. And everyone who has kids, pay attention to how they treat the world, because you never know who or what else is getting into their heads.
This went off the rails but thank you for listening to my rant TED TALK
