Actually the title should say, "If you are guy, don't take advice from your guy friends". Having observed some women in the wild, I find that if women are friends they try to really give good advice when asked. And sometimes even when they aren't asked. Guys? Nope. You see, one difference here is that we tend to enjoy watching our friends crash and burn from time to time. The show is only better if we could have in some way contributed to this event.
Don't believe me? Ever watched Punked (sp?)? There you go. Now, generally speaking we don't want life altering horrible events to go down. We just enjoy watching our friends squirm a bit. It gives us something to talk about the next time we go camping... or work on the car... or watch football... etc. That is just how we seem to roll. The funny thing is that for the most part, we don't even realize we are doing it. That's just how easy it is.
I offer for you an example of such an event. I will change the name of the main character to "Gary" in an effort to protect the moderately-innocent. If you know me already, you probably already know this story.
In college I lived in a five bedroom townhouse lovingly referred to as "280" (two-eighty). There were five of us there and while it might not have been a day-to-day hangin' out kind of a thing, we were all pretty close. Gary was by far the nicest and most innocent of all of us. Just a really good (and gullible) guy. This (unfortunately for him) made him an easy mark for us. We played our reindeer games with kid gloves in his case because we didn't really want anything bad to happen to him. Loosing a toe or two would have been acceptable though. Any one of us would take him to the hospital. Basically... we like him. Everybody liked him.
Gary had a girlfriend that he had been dating for about a year (not positive about that time frame). Well, they had been together quite a while. One night Gary came home in a bit of a sour mood. This being extremely uncommon for him, we all asked what was wrong. Gary recounted his story. The details aren't important, but basically he and his gf got in a fight that was really brought on by her stressing about finals. Gary had wanted to help... or something, and she had basically bitten his head off for his kindness.
Well... The three of us (our other roommate was working) started by consoling him that it would be ok and things would work out. Once we were "on his side" we started the half our process of getting him worked up into a frenzy. Stuff about how he didn't do anything wrong. Where did she get off treating him like that? All he was trying to do was something nice for her. How she doesn't respect him... We knew his buttons and we pressed them. At one point, the phrase "You need to go over there and get you some respect" was uttered. This hit a nerve for him. He grabbed his keys and headed to the door with our cheering him on from behind. His last words to us were about how he was going to get his respect.
Gary walked out the door. Loren, Mike, and I stood in the kitchen in silence for a moment. Soaking up the gravity of what we had just accomplished. I think it was Mike who said "You think that was good advice?" Loren and I looked at each other, said emphatically "NO!" and fell to the floor laughing.
About 45 minutes later Gary walked back through the door with his tail between his legs. I cracked a beer and handed it to him. He just took the beer in stride towards the living room and the sofa. He took a long swig off of his beer and just sat there. Silence. Then in a very small voice "Why did you tell me to do that?" After we finished laughing, we asked him why in the world he would EVER consider taking this kind of advice from us... lol... Poor Gary.
Gary recounted having his ass handed to him by the gf and how he was kicked out of her dorm room. Good stuff.
The fallout from this event lasted only a day or so. GF of Gary ended up apologizing for being an ass when Gary was trying to do something nice for her. All in all everything worked out ok. Gary ended up marrying somebody else later on down the road and I was even in the wedding. In fact... all of us from that night were.
To this day when I speak to Gary, this story inevitably comes up. He loves it now and will tell it at the drop of a hat.
Moral of the story... Just don't take your guy friends' advice. It will almost always get you into trouble.
--C
Don't believe me? Ever watched Punked (sp?)? There you go. Now, generally speaking we don't want life altering horrible events to go down. We just enjoy watching our friends squirm a bit. It gives us something to talk about the next time we go camping... or work on the car... or watch football... etc. That is just how we seem to roll. The funny thing is that for the most part, we don't even realize we are doing it. That's just how easy it is.
I offer for you an example of such an event. I will change the name of the main character to "Gary" in an effort to protect the moderately-innocent. If you know me already, you probably already know this story.
In college I lived in a five bedroom townhouse lovingly referred to as "280" (two-eighty). There were five of us there and while it might not have been a day-to-day hangin' out kind of a thing, we were all pretty close. Gary was by far the nicest and most innocent of all of us. Just a really good (and gullible) guy. This (unfortunately for him) made him an easy mark for us. We played our reindeer games with kid gloves in his case because we didn't really want anything bad to happen to him. Loosing a toe or two would have been acceptable though. Any one of us would take him to the hospital. Basically... we like him. Everybody liked him.
Gary had a girlfriend that he had been dating for about a year (not positive about that time frame). Well, they had been together quite a while. One night Gary came home in a bit of a sour mood. This being extremely uncommon for him, we all asked what was wrong. Gary recounted his story. The details aren't important, but basically he and his gf got in a fight that was really brought on by her stressing about finals. Gary had wanted to help... or something, and she had basically bitten his head off for his kindness.
Well... The three of us (our other roommate was working) started by consoling him that it would be ok and things would work out. Once we were "on his side" we started the half our process of getting him worked up into a frenzy. Stuff about how he didn't do anything wrong. Where did she get off treating him like that? All he was trying to do was something nice for her. How she doesn't respect him... We knew his buttons and we pressed them. At one point, the phrase "You need to go over there and get you some respect" was uttered. This hit a nerve for him. He grabbed his keys and headed to the door with our cheering him on from behind. His last words to us were about how he was going to get his respect.
Gary walked out the door. Loren, Mike, and I stood in the kitchen in silence for a moment. Soaking up the gravity of what we had just accomplished. I think it was Mike who said "You think that was good advice?" Loren and I looked at each other, said emphatically "NO!" and fell to the floor laughing.
About 45 minutes later Gary walked back through the door with his tail between his legs. I cracked a beer and handed it to him. He just took the beer in stride towards the living room and the sofa. He took a long swig off of his beer and just sat there. Silence. Then in a very small voice "Why did you tell me to do that?" After we finished laughing, we asked him why in the world he would EVER consider taking this kind of advice from us... lol... Poor Gary.
Gary recounted having his ass handed to him by the gf and how he was kicked out of her dorm room. Good stuff.
The fallout from this event lasted only a day or so. GF of Gary ended up apologizing for being an ass when Gary was trying to do something nice for her. All in all everything worked out ok. Gary ended up marrying somebody else later on down the road and I was even in the wedding. In fact... all of us from that night were.
To this day when I speak to Gary, this story inevitably comes up. He loves it now and will tell it at the drop of a hat.
Moral of the story... Just don't take your guy friends' advice. It will almost always get you into trouble.
--C
Comments
Oh... and... YECH!