Clan of the Cave Bear

As is wont to happen when a couple of guys get together at a bar, the talk turned to women. We ran through the usual debates and comments -- rehashing them because this wasn't a familiar guy grouping, at least to me. "Which city has the hotter girls?" "What do you look for in a girl?" That kind of thing. With a five to one single to taken ratio, we had a lot of opinions but not a lot of options.

The conversation turned to what particular traits about women intimidated us. Intelligence, money, age, experience? I said that a girl's cool factor could definitely intimidate me, especially in relation to this one girl from college, whom I've (rightly) dubbed "the coolest girl/person ever." She's seriously the only person I consciously just felt nervous about talking to and years later, I still feel the residual nervousness of those (non-)interactions.

Someone else said that beauty intimidated them. Like he would be very self conscious around a really attractive woman. In his mind he could picture the future and how it would be to fend off other pursuers. Then we reminded him that this wouldn't be in terms of a relationship, but just in the getting to know you stage. Even worse he said. He'd be even more aware of the "Who is that douchebag with the hot chick?" comments.

One of the guys, someone I don't know very well, said that he couldn't date someone smarter than him. We made the obligatory "Everyone is smarter than you" jokes but then dug a little deeper. What do you mean by intelligence and how much smarter would she have to be? Would being say, a lawyer or engineer, qualify her as too smart? The flippant reply was that she could be smart but not smart enough to realize that she should be dating better than him. Which was the perfect humorous answer but also probably a little bit true.

Another guy then brought up how he'd feel intimidated by a girl who was more worldly or cultured. Like if they'd been around and seen a lot of the world or experienced more of life. That would make him less sure of himself. It was interesting to see what people answered, even if it was just bar talk and not necessarily anything to be taken seriously.

The conversation wrapped up and we headed out.

It didn't pass me by that we were off to meet two successful girl friends for dinner. One is a lawyer and recently moved into the city. She's expecting her bar results this Friday. Her firm has had only one person fail in the past four years. That's apparently insane because the passage rate for the California bar is only 40%. It goes without saying that she's working for a top firm. Our other female dinner companion has been steadily working on her grad school applications for awhile now, fitting that task around her day job helping a Nobel winner with his research. Of the other two girls who'd normally be accompanying us for dinner, one was a law student and the other was more highly paid than any male there. By a long shot.

We're no dummies but it seems like we tend to know, as a general rule, women who are more accomplished than us on most levels. Money, intelligence, (looks), skills, coolness, culture, and any and all of everything we'd just talked about. So what did we have going for us? Well, we were men. And um, men rule?

All I can say is thank god for electronics that break and things that need to be moved or hung up occasionally.