There are a lot of things that puzzle me in and beyond this world and I sometimes wonder whether I am far weirder than I originally thought I was. I have been known to sit with my mouth agape with a look of total astonishment on my face about things I read about and see on the TV.
However, it is worse than that. There are more traditional things that are etched into history, culture and general behaviour that truly astonish me. I thought I might just discuss some of these in a couple of blog posts, starting with this one.
Why do close female friends complement each other, yet close male friends rip each other to shreds mercilessly?
Whenever Mrs PM goes out with her friends, she says things like “OOH! I love your dress”, “Your new hairstyle is wonderful” and “You look radiant today”.
The male equivalents are “So what possessed you wear that shirt? Are you taking drugs again?”, “It looks like you had a fight with a combine harvester and lost. I hope you’re taking the barber to court” and “You look a bit soppy today. Are you hung over?”
The thing is that men laugh at such insults even when they are the target. For example, I was recently in a pub with four other lads in Chester and I said “When I started drinking, I used to have lager and a dash of lime in it.” I was going to explain that I did that because I didn’t like the taste of beer at the time and the lime made it drinkable. I was going to go on to explain that I stopped drinking it because it was expensive and I grew to like the taste of beer.
I didn’t get very far at all. As soon as I said “lime” I was ruthlessly mocked – by all four of them. I just had to sit there and take the abuse. Mind you, the abuse was funny so I was laughing along too.
When did that start to happen? And why?
Why do some people get so angry online?
I’ve had the odd reaction to innocent posts in the past from “keyboard warriors” and “trolls” mainly in comments. When I had a go at Shakespeare in a humorous post, one or two people had a real go at me, calling me names and unleashing their rage at me.
I allowed one or two posts to slip through but rejected the rest of them because they were quite bad. I have a thick skin so I can take it. I have faith in people and although they disagreed with my thoughts, some people did so in a nice way that provoked debate rather than expressing their outrage on my innocent content.
Some people get a lot worse abuse than I have ever received though. You only have to see reactions to things that celebrities do or what politicians say to judge the depth of the anger and rage in some people. And a lot of things that these trolls are reacting too is totally trivial.
One of the biggest offenders is Donald Trump but they can’t all be like him – surely? Not everybody in the world is a malignant narcissist, are they?
I believe that it is because some people are unable to vent their rage in normal life and choose to do so anonymously.
What I don't understand is that I would never do that so why do some people think it is okay to be so completely horrible online?
What the hell is going on in the universe?
This year, in order to improve the subject matter of my reading material, I decided to start reading more non-fiction and the first book I read was “A Brief History of Time” by the late lamented Professor Stephen Hawking. I studied and passed “A-Level” physics and understood some of the basic concepts he was writing about. Of course, my knowledge of the universe is limited, especially compared to the genius author, but some concepts made my mind utterly boggle.
For example, time is not a constant. Just think about that for a second. We move through the universe at a temporal speed of one second per second. Yet as we move out into space and increase our speed, time moves slower. What this means is that if I were to board a spaceship and travel for a minute at the speed of light, then time slows down for you.
Doesn’t that boggle your mind?
But it’s worse than that. What is dark matter? What the hell is anti-matter? And what is the deal with black holes? What happened before the Big Bang?
I really enjoyed the book but it left far more questions than answers.
To be fair, I think that there are numerous physicists trying to answer these questions and make sense of them.
But my mind is truly boggled!
Why do men stand next to each other when they go to the toilet?
Okay – this is a weird one and I've left it until last for that reason.
I am a man and I have accepted that whenever I go to a public toilet, I sometimes have to stand next to a man and answer the call of nature.
But why do we do this? There are unwritten rules of etiquette when you are a bloke. You are not supposed to look around when you are doing the business and definitely not allowed to talk to the gentleman standing next to you, even if you are best friends. Yet women, apparently, are quite happy to have a deep conversation from adjacent cubicles. For men, once you pass the threshold of the toilet door and enter that realm, communication becomes a bad thing unless it is absolutely necessary. And the moment you stand in front of a urinal, no words should pass your lips until you have finished.
It’s odd. Some bloke in the past must have decided that it is okay to make men stand next to each other. I wonder who that was?
And finally …
There are many more things that confuse me and I will almost certainly highlight some of these in future posts.
I am clearly not as clever as I thought I was.
