It's just a guy thing
By Mike Silva
I wrote the following as a column in the Viewpoints section of my college newspaper, the Houstonian, back at Sam Houston State University.
I thought it was good, so I regurgitated it here. Enjoy.
There are few times in an adult man’s life when he is allowed to act childish.
In these instances, even the mature adult who says, “Hey, act your age,” is making a motion in futility. For these cases, there is no hope to slide us, as men, to a favorable mood.
Most of the time, when we get in this “mood,” it is because something is out of our hands or there is something happening in which we have no control of determining the outcome, yet somehow we feel unfairly shorted and begin to place blame on any and every thing, unreasonably.
One example includes when your team is losing.
Obviously, we have no power in altering the work ethic and accomplishments of complete strangers being paid millions for recreational activities. Either way, their short fallings seem to affect us in the biggest way.
Typical rundown of what happens: my Yankees are losing, I become irate; I blame the loss on the umps, and the terrible front office for bringing in “bums” to fill positions; I accuse these all-stars of playing worse than my 71-year-old grandmother could, all of which is complete nonsense.
Another occurrence when this bravado dilemma exists is when guys face off in Madden. For any guy who is truly a guy, I don’t need to elaborate on the importance of winning a game of Madden.
Through some ridiculous flaw in logic, we equate whoever is best at Madden with being the most manly guy of the bunch. Throw all corny Chuck Norris jokes aside: the man who dominates Madden is the real man.
So understandably, when we lose, it’s the end of the world. This somehow means you’re less of a man than your winning adversary, so the immaturity resurfaces. It’s bad enough if you lose to a stranger, but by all means, don’t lose to a friend. Names will be called, tempers will flare, and you will hear for hours how you suck. That is, until you defeat your friend, and the tables turn.
In any case, we blame the game on cheating for our opponent, or claim the game wants our friend’s team to win, and that’s why we lost, which again is completely off the wall.
These actions are inevitable. No matter what, we men will be on at least one end of this sort of incident at multiple times in our lives. The question is not how to prevent or alter the outcome. The real query is why we do it.
Maybe it has to do with our competitive nature. Maybe it has to do with jealousy, where we would rather triumph and brag about than see the reverse happen with another guy. Maybe it has to do with how arrogant we have become and how we are spoiled with ways to entertain ourselves.
I don’t know if anyone will ever understand why we do it. Until someone discovers that answer, my explanation will be simple and to-the-point: it’s a guy thing.