Secret Girls' Stuff (9 page)

‘Nuthin’.’

‘You can tell her, she’s not a teacher, she’s an awfur,’ goes this other kid.

It turned out he’d brought his older sister’s lacy satin G-string to school. It was thirty cents for a feel and fifty cents for a sniff! Disgusting, but that’s the way lots of little boys (and BIG BOYS) think, whether you like it or not. Personally, I couldn’t think of anything worse than sniffing someone’s undies, male or female, let alone paying to do it! Imagine being THIS boy’s sister! When she strolls down the street in her 501s and a heap of smutty little boys snigger at her, she won’t have a clue why. Boys have secrets too!

Boys like showing off in front of girls. Girls are supposed to admire them. That’s why boys dive off tall towers into swimming pools and nearly break their necks in front of you, do bombs practically on top of you, skid their bikes all over you, roar round in cars with their mates doing wheelies and donuts, tell filthy jokes in order to impress you, and generally act like idiots. Here’s
an email from Jane, age eleven

As I said, boys are rather odd. They usually say they hate girls when they are around ten years old, then suddenly at about fourteen they lock themselves in the bathroom for hours doing their hair and spend a fortune on pimple cream. That is how mothers can tell when their sons have fallen in love.

Now comes the bit where the boy might ask the girl out, or the girl might ask the boy out. In the olden days it was policy to wait for the boy to do the asking. Like I said, girls sat glued to phones all over Australia waiting with thumping heart for the guys to ring.

But this is the age of gender equity and equality so it’s okay to phone up boys or ask them out. This is always awkward at first. Like, what if the boy says no? Like, how will you cope?

If a boy says no, then another boy says no, don’t give up and take yourself off to a nunnery. Keep trying. But make the offer sound casual, not like you’re looking for a husband or it’s desperation city or something. Boys
hate
that.

Here’s an email from Kerryn, age thirteen:

Well, I’m not the absolute expert in boys, romance, sex and stuff. But I guess I’ve listened to enough conversations on beaches, milkbars, video parlours and mall seats, and read enough emails and letters to have a few clues.

If you don’t want to do this Round Robin thing, where you ask your girlfriend to ask the boy you’re keen on’s best mate if he likes you and does he want to go out with you, which can become very complicated, then here are some sure-fire ideas which, as my granny always said, ‘Won’t leave you with egg on your face’.

1. Sometimes it’s easier to phone than speak directly face-to-face with the boy you’re asking out. It gives him time to think whether to say yes or no. Also, you can’t see his face and so you don’t know whether he’s pulling faces, pretending to spew, or grinning with delight, which makes it less daunting.
   
2. Try not to say, ‘Are you doing anything next Saturday arvo?’ If he says ‘no’ he could then be very nervous wondering what he’s let himself in for, like you could be asking him
   to do a car-washing stint for charity or something. If he says ‘Yes’ then you have to more or less hang up, because you can’t grill him like a detective about what he’s doing and who with.
   
3. Try to ask him to something general where there are heaps of other people, like a party or a barbecue, or a group trip to the movies or to see a sporting event.
   Don’t
   ask him to the family barbecue, or any other family event! Your father or grandfather will immediately collar him and ask him personal questions like, ‘Do you have any mental defects in your family, what’s your religion, blood group, what do your parents do, where do you live, what kind of car do your parents drive, what do you want to be when you grow up, are there any hereditary diseases in your family, what political party do they follow, what footy team do you barrack for, have you got private health insurance, any serial killers, drug addicts, murderers in your family?’ Your granny and your mum are more likely
   to ask such things as, ‘What’s your socks and jocks size?’ in readiness for next year’s Christmas presents.
   All of these questions from both the male and female rellies will send a first date running in the opposite direction.
   
4. Make the invitation to go on a date with you sound non-threatening.
   Like, ‘There’s a party at my friend’s house next Saturday and I was wondering if you’d like to come.’ If he says, ‘Can I bring someone?’ don’t say, ‘Yes, me,’ because he probably means he’s bringing another girl in which case he could be ‘taken’. If he says yes, calmly give him the time, location then ask if he’d like to pick you up from your home or meet you there.
   

If it’s the movies never say you’ll meet a boy inside because then you have to pay for your own ticket, unless of course you did the asking, in which case you should offer to pay for yourself. The first date, he pays, if he’s asked you, otherwise you should offer to pay for yourself. The second date,
he pays, assuming that this time he’s asked you. The third date, if things look like they could be going to develop long term, you can offer to pay for something. I always believe if you’re worth going out with, then you’re worth paying for, at least for the first few dates, even if he’s a poor student with no money!

Sometimes an imaginary boyfriend can be fun. It’s normal to have ‘crushes’ on movie stars, pop idols, rock stars, sports heroes and other public figures.

The problem with these real people who have become fantasy lovers is that when you meet them in real life they are usually very ordinary.

They often have bad breath, underarm BO, or FO (foot odour), zits and freckles which you don’t normally see under their make-up if they are TV stars, or they are so up themselves! Some stars and heroes are really nice, but they usually have lovely girlfriends with slim figures, thin thighs and long legs up to their armpits, silky blonde hair and eyes with palm-frond eyelashes, charming personalities and they never get pimples or PMT.

Hero worship is safe. You can drift away into your own private world with your secret love and weave wonderful magic dreams with Mr Perfect.
But the reality is boys. And some of those bitchy so-called girlfriends, because once boys are involved in your life the game play can change and some sneaky moves can happen unless you know the score.

Also, most boys haven’t a clue how to handle this sort of stuff. Girls often share secrets, discuss feelings, and read magazines which tell them how to share secrets and discuss feelings.

Boys usually read car, truck, motorbike or sports magazines, they don’t read
Dolly
or
Girlfriend
or
Cleo
or
Cosmopolitan
. They don’t usually reveal their feelings about things to each other. They mostly talk about sport.

Did you know that there’s been research about how males and females use the phone? Females phone their girlfriends and talk about clothes, food, hair, other females, males and all their other problems.

Females actually process their stuff by talking about it out loud and it helps them to get rid of their worries and concerns. A female can say goodbye to her friend at the front gate then phone
her up half an hour later and talk for two hours.

Males use phones for business or to talk about sport. Their conversations are usually brief. That’s why, when girls phone up boys, the conversations are often one-sided, with the girl doing a lot of the talking, unless the boy has older sisters and is used to phone-law.

When I was a teenager it was considered forward and unladylike to phone a boy. The boy was supposed to do the phoning up and the asking out. Have you ever hung round a phone hoping for that special guy to call you?

As granny always said, ‘A watched kettle never boils’ and believe me, a watched phone never rings! You think, he said he’d call.

Then you think, maybe he’s sick. Then you think, maybe he’s dead. You pluck up courage and phone him, and his sister answers and says, ‘Who?’

Which means he hasn’t discussed your existence with family members. Or worse, she says, ‘Okay, I’ll get him for you, Jane,’ and your name’s Emily.

To sum up this stuff:

1. Boys are different from girls.
   
2. Boys think differently from girls and tend to hide their feelings.
   
3. Girls are better at knowing about love, dating, romance and sex than boys.
   

But some girls get confused between buddy friendship with boys, romantic love with boys and sex with boys!

Boys can be very cruel with their comments and sometimes they are the reason why girls start to lose their self-esteem, diet so much and even become anorexic.

This is an extract out of a letter from Mindi, age fourteen: