Boys and Men

A book entitled Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus is a much-touted book but one I've never read. The title speaks for itself: the male and the female species are as disparate as can humanly be possible.

Just the other night, a friend and I were talking about the idea and were laughing about it when she said something to the effect that the Mars and Venus bits are relative to their distance from the sun. I said, "not from the earth?" I was thinking in terms of being detached from reality. Then I said, maybe it should be men are from Pluto and women from Mercury. That's why many husbands frustrate their wives. They take many things for granted which same things women value or are sensitive about or to. The same goes for moms and their sons.

Let me give a concrete example.

Yesterday would have been Joey's 19th birthday. His parents for the first time celebrated the event with the class. When Joey was around, he'd give money P50, I think, to his classmates during recess to buy what they wanted. That would constitute his birthday treat. How novel, no?

Anyway, back to yesterday, so the parents of Joey texted and emailed the classmates and their parents and friends to come to a kite-flying party. Someone had dreamt that was what Joey wanted (I think I mentioned this in a previous blog). As the afternoon wore one, my son said, "Want to join us? We'll sing happy birthday for Joey." So we promptly went to where tables were laden with food, a birthday cake included. The boys sang on benches were Joey used to hang out before a Dulaang Sibol show. In fact he has pictures attesting to that.

After the sang, the mom explained why the request that everything sing, to us, a small group of moms huddled around her. She said that a blog of Joey said something to the effect that on his 18th birthday, his parents didn't sing him Happy Birthday. She sadly recalled that, in the past when they'd sing for him, he'd brush them aside, implying they should stop, it was corny, etc. But deep down, after all, he missed it when they decided not to sing for him. oh boy...

Men -- they bottle up how they feel, they pretend they don't feel. They do, after all...

Picture attached is of the kite we brought. It's supposed to be a bat which looks so miniscule. You might need binoculars to see it. The bigger kites refused to take off. There wasn't much wind. I'll post the picture later.

Here it is. Look for the kite. It's between twigs. It looks like a speck in the sky, but at least it flew. The bigger kites didn't or dropped off after a few seconds. Our kite looked so third world because it was small and black, but small can be beautiful. Hahaha. Rationalizing.






Oh, okay, somewhere else in this blog entry is another picture of the bat kite in the sky. It's more evident, right?