You know how when guys are young, they greet each other with a punch? (Yeah, I know, girls, I never understood it, either.)
What’s the grown-up equivalent of that punch?
The Catmage Chronicles
Andy thought he was going crazy when a talking cat showed up at his front door. He couldn’t have been more wrong.Goldeneyes is a Catmage – a cat with human intelligence and magical abilities. Andy is an eighth grader who is smart, impulsive, and trying to avoid the school bully at all costs. A prophecy threw them together. There’s just one problem: Goldeneyes can’t stand humans.The Catmage world is heading toward war. Goldeneyes and Andy must try to stop the enemy from getting stronger. And they must save a powerful Catmage who’s been kidnapped. For Goldeneyes, it’s personal. That Catmage is her grandmother.Andy and Goldeneyes must try to put aside their differences. If they can’t, the enemy will soon be too powerful to defeat…
Insults and put-downs. (Often on the border between homophobic and homoerotic.)
Sword fights.
High fives and overuse of the word “dude”
It’s still a punch, or a hand-shake with a shoulder clasp.
“Grown-up”?
We slap each other (lightly, mind you) on the stomachs. Yeah, and some insults and put-downs, of course, too.
See, now I just think some of you are just making shit up. Except Matt. And Eric.
I know. I’ll go read Norah Vincent’s new book! After all, who best to understand the mind of a man than a lesbian who dresses up as a guy to go hang out with men?
Meryl,
Someone I know summed up the difference of communication among the two (heh) genders very well:
Men communicate to establish Hierarchy, Women communicate to establish intimacy.
Sounds like my friend read the book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
Not making it up, Meryl…as you know I am truely and definitely a guy and can speak from experience.
Who, me? Making stuff up? Nevah…
But this Norah Vincent is something else, on that I agree wholeheartedly. She hit all the nails on the head.
Depends, but knuckle-busting handshakes are popular.
Ryan, that is one of my biggest pet peeves. I can’t remember who the guy was, but some guy at work grabbed my hand and shook it in one of those bone-crunching handshakes when he was introduced to me. Then he tried to do it again when he was leaving, and I pulled my hand back before he could and said, “Oh, no. You already did that once, you’re not crushing my hand again.”
I don’t care if it was perceived as rude. I don’t care if he was publicly embarrassed. I cannot STAND having my hand squeezed by some stranger who thinks it’s okay to smash it as a ritual greeting.
It most certainly is not.
Usually its a male-to-male thing, but I have heard a lot of women complain about it in the business environment.