The Tao of Ben

Ooooh, Saturday was a real treat this week. My weekly luncheon with Annie is always something I look forward to, but yesterday was particularly rewarding. Our darling Kati was guest speaker and she always brings a lot to the table. When your boyfriend is a sweet spirit like our little friend Ben, it would be hard to imagine NOT having a lot to offer.

Oh, Ben. Borrowing from his beyond stellar relationship history, Ben has crafted a truly awe-inspiring philosophy on men, women, and relationships. He's done it! He figured it out! Here lies the key! And WHAT a key!

So, according to Ben, men are like oak trees. (Please, people! Try to hold the snickering till the end of the forced metaphor. It gets better, I promise.) Men are like oak trees in a relationship. They're strong and sturdy and stable. Women are like rivers. (Hey, I said no snickering!) Women can be calm at times and raging at others. They are unpredictable and tend to flow together like a river (and according to my graphic, also very German--that's the Rhine).

Oh, wise, sagacious Ben, if a tree falls in the woods, and there's no one there to hear it, are you still a moron?

The saddest thing is that Ben seems to have really put a lot of thought into such a ridiculous, empirically denied (oh yeah, I'm breaking out the debate terminology), broad generalization that basically pigeon-holes 3 billion people into one corner and the other 3 billion into the other. Ben admits that his theory is a bit of a generalization... Just a bit? Really? How many bits go into 6 billion? A lot, I'm guessing.

He's basically saying that men are all strong and stable and the erratic damsels are drowning in the river... or something. It's absurd and it does a disservice to women AND men (but mostly women--thanks, loser), posing a sexist argument that's inaccurate at best and insulting at least. This metaphor would also make men immovable, unadaptable, and rigid, so even while he's trying to make the men come out on top in this comparison, he's just kind of making the river seem better and better.

The best part, however, as anyone who has ever met Ben can attest, is that by his definitions of oak trees and rivers, he very, VERY clearly falls into the river. I mean, he's drowning, DROWNING in the river. Never in all my life have I met anyone who ran so hot and cold, had so little direction, and was so unstable in his life as Benny Boy. Sturdy oak, my ass. If he's a sturdy oak, then he must be on fire because I seem a cloud of smoke hovering... Oh wait, that's jut all the crack he's smoking. Precious. I don't know that I've ever encountered anyone who was so thoroughly unaware of himself. Ben, meet river... oh wait, you've met.

Sorry Smokey Oaky, but no entire gender is entirely anything, and to make such generalizations is unjust to both. But thanks for playing.

Although, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe it's isn't an entirely groundless theory. I mean honestly, I can think of one sense in which Ben is an oak tree and Kati is a river.

Kati is going places, and Ben is standing still. Ouch, but true. Huh, better metaphor than I thought. :)

(If I thought for a second that Ben actually read this blog, I'd feel a little bad, but I have no doubt he doesn't even know it exists, you know, being all planted in the forest somewhere and whatnot... Precious.)