Test Drive: Life in the Fast Lane

It's just stuff.

Our storage room in our apartment flooded, ruining J's collection of baseball/basketball (the most heartbreaking for me)/football cards, and boxes of ornaments that I bought when I worked for Hallmark. Luckily, my childhood ornaments are still at my parents.

Between the insurance headaches (having to dig what I thought would be considered trash out of a dumpster), the apartment complex fixing the hole in the ceiling when the leak originated when I specifically requested they leave it be until Friday so the insurance guy could see it, and countless other annoyances, I am ready to go on vacation.

So I am. To visit one of my closest girl friends, who I miss dearly. It couldn't come at a better time because sometimes you just need a little girl time.

I guess I was always a guys' girl in high school, which was odd since I attended a private all girls' school. Most of my girl friends had lots of platonic guy friends, and I did too. Guys were easier to talk to. Guys never got jealous, they let you borrow their clothes and didn't care when they got them back, and they were always ready to go out without spending hours on their hair, dress, and makeup.

Despite feeling more comfortable with guys, I had a core group of girl friends. We would fight, but we'd get over it. When it comes to those good solid girl friends, what's in the past is in the past. Girl friends get things that guys don't always understand, or maybe girls don't always understand what guys seem to take at face value.

Case in point:

Guy wants to spend Friday night with his friends.

Guy meaning: I want to spend Friday night with my friends.
Girl meaning: He doesn't want to spend Friday night with me.

If one of my girl friends tells me this story, I will go with the guy meaning. However, if the case in point happens to me, I automatically jump to the girl meaning. Why? Because I am a girl. And girls get that. It may be irrational, but sometimes we need irrational. We need to cry. We need to vent our frustrations with men in this meat and potatoes world by drinking girly drinks with our girl friends and spending too much money on uncomfortable shoes. We need to blow things out of proportion like losing collectibles in a storage room flood and blame it on "the man" (not our man, but that metaphorical man we tend to blame things on). We need to go to yoga, run on the treadmill, eat healthy for a week, and then buy a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup SonicBlast (which has more than half an average person's daily calorie count) and eat it in under ten minutes. Because that's what girls do.

Sometimes I think it would be much easier to be a guy. More guy friendships are made when one guy beats up another guy, and then they are best friends. If a girl hit me in the face, I'd have a restraining order on her. Guys usually don't care as much about their hair or fashion, and they don't have to worry about makeup. Guys don't talk on the phone for hours to their buddies, which would save a lot of time. Guys don't read chick lit novels or spend money of pedicures or girly drinks. Guys don't cry at Kodak commercials or during Senior Night (every year) for their alma mater's basketball team. But, you know what? I wouldn't give it up. Despite the hair removal, blisters from heels, underwire issues, and moments of emotional turmoil, I like being a girl, and I love my girl friends.