Shawn Peters: No Pun Intended

Mis(ter) Communication: Man-on-Man Coverage

(this article first appeared on The Good Man Project website on Dec. 10, 2011)

 

If you are a man, and there’s at least a fifty percent chance you are, you’ve likely experienced the following. You and a friend/co-worker/relative are talking about sports, and a conversation-adjacent woman sighs and announces, “Ugh, all you men do is talk about sports!” as if there could be nothing more trivial, useless or sad. But what is truly sad is the fact that these sports conversations between men are marginalized when they actually represent progress, evolution, and maybe even hope for the future of our planet. 

Let me explain, or, as Indigo Montoya once said, “There is too much. Let me sum up.”

Mis(ter) Communication: Autocorrect My Relationship

NOTE: This piece originally appeared as part of The Good Man Project on November 18, 2011. You can find it here.

 

On the website damnyouautocorrect.com, there was a photo of an iPhone screen. Someone named Michelle had received a text that read, "I just wanted to say: I love you!" Her response was "Oh babe. I love you too. If I could, I'd buy you a casket." After several seconds of what we can only assume was frantic thumb-typing, she finally followed up her morbid love-text, "Gah! A Castle! Damn auto correct. Way to ruin a moment." If Michelle and her beau are together long enough, there may, in fact, be a day when she wishes to put him in the ground, but apparently, not yet.

While this may seem like an amazingly modern tale, it really isn't anything new, because since the beginning of time, being in a relationship  has meant dealing with constant miscommunications, regardless of whether you're face-to-face, or phone-to-phone. Romeo and Juliet anyone?