When I got married last year, I went from having 3 guy room-mates to having 3 girl room-mates, 2 of whom were under the age of 6. Most guys would think that is a pretty sweet trade-off, and I must admit, I love all 3 of my new roomies.
On a somewhat related topic, when I was a young boy I heard and used the phrase "cry like a little girl" quite frequently. As in, "don't make me come over there or I'll make you cry like a little girl" or "we made fun of Matty until he started to cry like a little girl" or "I punched Brian in the stomach and he started to cry like a little girl" and so on and so forth.
I never thought much about "crying like a little girl"... I just grew up knowing that if a boy cries, then he may as well be a little girl. I must admit, on my first day of kindergarten I was walking to school with JD (who shall remain partially anonymous) when he started to run while I was still walking... about 15 seconds later the bell rang and I just started crying - mostly out of fear from stories I had heard about teachers beating kids who were late to class - and JD turned around and yelled (within earshot of a bunch of kids who were then running to class), "Look at Pete! He's crying like a little girl!" and then he ran on to class.
Well I ain't no dummy... and I learned my lesson that day and never cried again. And I intend on never crying again, for I have a deeply imbedded fear of once again being compared to a crying little girl.
Let me now connect the dots. Since trading my 3 guy room-mates for 3 girl room-mates, I have a whole new perspective on what it means to cry like a little girl. Over the last year, I've had MANY experiences that ended/started/contained crying little girls - and let me add that I love all of these experiences and all the female participants :)
I've come up with a Top 10 list of reasons underlying the "crying like a little girl" experiences we've had in our house recently. In each of these situations, I was surprised to hear a little girl crying (more like weeping in most cases), for what appeared to me to be no good reason at all... so in each scenario, I asked, "Why are you crying?" and these were the Top 10 responses:
10. "Because nobody counted for me while I was rinsing with mouthwash."
9. "Because I can't get my little shirt off over my head." (Yes, the child's head is disproportionately large compared to her body, like all other children's monstrous heads)
8. "Because I can't see any sparkles in my eyes when I'm sick."
7. "Because my tummy growled at me."
6. (Hiding behind her mom who was unplugging their toilet...) "Because the toilet started to overflow and I got really scared."
5. (The day after #6) "Because I can't flush the toilet, I'm too scared."
4. "Because my cookie had too many chocolate chips." (WHAT!?!?!?! This girl is a choco-holic!!!)
3. "Because too many tickets came out of the machine while I was playing and it scared me really really really really bad." (The machine was a Skee-ball machine...)
2. "Because I have too much poop and I can't get it out and ... can you help me?"
1. "Because, because, because ... I don't know why."
Yep, just crying like a little girl.
