Shaking off a weight

I've been chewing on something the last few days, and it's coming into flower as a full-fledged theory, I think - or close to it. It's one of those based-on-personal experience (and observation) theories that may or may not be applicable to the wider world of humans. But I suspect there's something in it.

Talking to a friend the other day who was puzzled over why two of his female friends had gotten offended by something he'd said, in jest - something they absolutely knew was in jest and did not reflect his views at all.

And I said to him that it might be because they are young - in their early/mid-20s. And he said, "But I'm that age, and I don't get offended by those things."

"But you are a boy."

My theory is this: that women view things very seriously, in deadly earnest, in their early adulthood, and tend to grow more playful as they get older. Whereas, young men start out playful and grow more serious.

Well, that was my theory up until that point. Mulling it around in my head a few more days, and I think I've found out why. It has to do with one's perception of time. Or rather, with what kind of time one is focused on. Girls set their sights on their future lives - on imagining them, and gathering the bricks to build them.

Boys, I think, focus much more on the present - on having fun, on being light, and footloose and fancy free.

Later on (sometimes much later), men begin to feel that it's time for them to "settle down," and live in a more finished, subdued, responsible kind of way. To become what used to be called a "family man."

Women - well, I don't really know about all women, or to be fair even about most women - but in my own case at least, I find that my focus is so much on the present, on today, on this moment, this hour, this stroke of the pedal, that view over the bridge, this raincloud about to perhaps dump the weight of the Hudson River on me, that I can scarcely plan a Friday night.

I don't want to schedule anything. I don't want to decide much of anything - beyond, perhaps, what to eat for dinner (though I don't want to have to shop for it, either).

What I do want to do is play. Relax. Smile. Look at the sun (when it's out, which isn't often lately).

And this, I think, is why I feel so happy being around young boys. We are alike, in a way - both brimming with hormones and energy and impatience and the desire to bounce ourselves off the walls of the world, or better - to leap right the hell over them, executing a perfect wheelie in mid-air on the way down.

(What photograph could possibly go with that? Nothing I've taken, because I've been too busy doing.)