Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCCVIII

I think it must be a guy thing. I seldom see women doing it, but I see men doing it all the time...everywhere I go. It reminds me of the theme song from the old television show, "Cheers," where it talks about a "place where everyone knows your name." In this case, these "places" are restaurants and coffee houses where men gather every morning to drink coffee and share stories. The topics are as varied as anyone's imagination, but the most common subjects are sports and politics, and disagreements occur frequently. Yes, I participate, and I love it.

I do a lot of traveling and I have my regular breakfast spots in each city when I'm not staying in a hotel that provides a free breakfast...and I see the same people in each place every time I go. In Jonesboro, Arkansas, I usually eat at the Holiday Inn or The Front Page Cafe. Both places have a big table where at least ten guys will gather every morning and shoot the bull, usually on a come and go basis. In Metairie, Louisiana, it's the Tiffin Inn Pancake House, and although I'm about three hundred miles from home, I'm beginning to recognize the men that I expect to see every time I go. If I'm not traveling, I will usually meet up with friends at either the Corner Coffee House or McDonald's. We've been meeting there for years, and we see the same people day after day. My father-in-law lives in southern Louisiana, but when he's driving through the northern part of the state, he likes to stop at McDonald's in Ruston, and the coffee crowd there is getting to know who he is.

As I was saying earlier, we see a few women in these places every day, but they are rarely a part of the regular daily crowd. That doesn't mean that women don't like to mingle with other women, but I believe they are more likely to do it on a more formal basis. For example, ladies' groups at church seem to thrive and be better attended than similar men's groups. (We do have a group of both men and women who meet at the Coffee House every Saturday after our weekly long run, but that is a weekly meeting, and we usually just talk among ourselves.) I think this is a great example of some of the differences between men and women, and the different ways we have of viewing the world. For example, if a wife would ask her husband who are the guys he sees every morning at coffee, he could name every one of them in a heartbeat, but after that is when those differences begin to appear. The husband may mention something that Greg said, and his wife will ask, "Who's Greg?"

"He's one of my coffee buddies. He's a CPA."

"What's his wife's name?"

"I don't know."

"Well, is he married?"

"I don't know."

"Does he have kids?"

"Probably."

The women would find out all that information the first morning...except for the part about him being a CPA. The men would know who his favorite sports teams are, who he's gonna support for President, where he works, and where he likes to hunt. That doesn't mean that family issues are not important to men, it's just not something they spend a lot of time talking about with other men. I heard of one situation where a husband was talking to a man that his wife also knew, and when the man mentioned that he and his wife were getting a divorce, the husband said, "Man, that's too bad. I hate to hear that." End of conversation. That night when he got home, he mentioned it to his wife, and she had all kinds of questions about it, but her husband couldn't answer any of them, because he hadn't thought about asking.

I started out by saying, "It's a guy thing." There are plenty of other topics where we could say, "It's a girl thing." Yes men and women are different...and that's a good thing. It doesn't mean that one sex is superior to the other, it's just that we were created different. That's a God thing.

Preston