Categories

Back in the day, we used to play a drinking game called Categories. It was a little bit like Scattegories. Someone would shout out a category and then around the circle we would go, shouting out items in that category. If you failed to produce an item for the list for that category, you had to drink (of course) and come up with a new category. I think. My memories of the exact rules of this game are a little fuzzy for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, the reason I bring this up is due to a recent conversation I had about my propensity to categorize every blessed thing. I like to put things into boxes and tie them up with a neat bow. It serves me to be able organize people and behaviors. For example, I believe there are personality traits common to first born children. I believe that people who live in different areas of the country have certain regional tendencies. When you grow up orbiting around NYC, you snap your fingers and want things to happen tout suite. Things tend to happen tout suite, too. When I moved to Florida, I could not begin to tell you how much of a fish out of water I was in the culture there. Things just don't move fast like they do up North.

Anyhow, this little discussion was about my categorization of people by gender. I tend to do a lot of characterizing people by their gender. I even liked "Men Are from Mars..." I was very drawn to a PBS special years ago where I remember the thesis of evolutionary development of the different genders. Men, having to hunt and be out on the plains for long periods, were required to be mono-focused...to think more linearly...to not be as easily distracted. Women, whose survival required them to socialize and raise their children in community, learned to focus on many things at once. They thought more relationally, they attended to many things at once: the pot on the stove, the children, the peers, etc. This made just a heck of a lot of sense to me. It wasn't meant to be sexist or judgemental. It was meant to distill things down, to simplify. To find clarity where there is confusion. That is what I seek.

Here are some of the blogs I have written using my "categorization talent":

http://lemurandlou.blogspot.com/2011/04/further-understanding-of-momzilla.html

http://lemurandlou.blogspot.com/2011/02/women-are-from-venus-and-other-women.html

http://lemurandlou.blogspot.com/2011/02/we-havent-always-all-lived-on-venus.html

http://lemurandlou.blogspot.com/2012/11/carrots-or-candy-bars.html

http://lemurandlou.blogspot.com/2010/06/doing-man-up.html