Role Model

​Role Models
Someone put on their Facebook page, “men are good for reaching high places and dealing with yukky stuff.”  I would like to add one.  Opening things.  I had a bottle of paint Merril had made up, handed to me to open.  For the life of me I huffed and I puffed.  I did all sorts of things but could not get it open.  It became a challenge.  Eventually I used what Merril refers to as our “Titanic Tools.”  Really big ones I inherited from dad.  I found a metal clamp and got the top off easy peasy.
I have spent the last few days looking into Men’s identity crisis.  Typing that into my search engine showed me what I felt was right.  It is real and there are heaps of articles on it.
There is no doubt that a lot of it has been brought on ourselves.  Where I used to work a guy plonked a child on the counter and said to the woman attendant “you look after this as I have shopping to do.”  She rightfully refused citing that is not the way we do things here.
Many men it seems have failed to be who they were meant to be.  Women through the ages have been seen as conquests, notches on the belt. Exploited as the “weaker sex.”
Having said that the pendulum seems to have swung too far the other way.  I am reminded of Gretta hissing vehemently “we will never forgive you.”  Bit rich to me.   Maybe someone faultless could say that.
One article I read put forward something I had not considered before.  The author said something that is accepted today was not in times past, and it has made a big difference.  I do not think these things are never justified, it just seems to me sometimes the easy way out is sometimes taken.  They said today we see divorce and single parenthood when we did not in times past.
The contention was that many boys are growing up without a dad role model.  They cited that over 90% of male prisoners, Isis recruits, and mass shooters are dad deprived males.
I must admit I do wonder how we will defend ourselves without guns, but I am glad my neighbour does not have one.  I played one of those online shoot em up games.  I wondered why I was not responding.  Apparently, that was me dead.  But I came back to life for another go.
For many kids without good role models, life is a video game.  Shoot something and it comes back to life.  It is a life without consequence.  But try telling that to the ones whose lives are shattered (that does not address the ones whose lives are full of hate.  For them “where there is a will, there is a way.”).
That was just one thing of many that have been mentioned.  I have opened a door for a lady and been thanked profusely and called by another a male chauvinist.  No wonder men are confused.
There is a right way, but it has been rejected and what is seen is the consequence of that rejection.