64. Categories

I’ve realised recently that, as far as I am concerned, there are only four broad types of people in the world: two kinds of women and two kinds of men.  I came across these startling insights in the space of two days, about women first and then about men.

Last Thursday, Caroline and I were with a female friend. She has been a friend of Caroline’s for twenty-five years and a friend of us both for about fifteen years.  I therefore know her very well and I like her very much.  When I describe her as a friend, she is, to me, a 5 on Wilton's Scale of Relationships.  As far as Caroline is concerned, she is a 6 or possibly the 7.

At one point in the evening she said something that could be taken in either one of two ways.  One way was the way that she intended it but the other way was the way in which I immediately interpreted it – rude, coarse and very smutty indeed.

I said nothing but I had a little private giggle.  I thought about the even ruder and smuttier ways of how what she had said could be developed and consequently I giggled some more and completely lost track of the conversation.  But I still said nothing.  Since then and after some thought, I have realised that there are some women, such as our companion that evening, with whom I never say anything smutty, make any kind of innuendo or say anything suggestive.

I began to list, mentally, all the women I know and put them into one of these two categories: those that I can be smutty with and those with who I’m not.  It was easy because there weren’t any that I wasn’t sure of.  A few minutes ago, I wrote out the two lists.  I read list A to Caroline.  She was in that list.

“What have those people got in common?” I asked her.

“They’re all women,” she said.

“Anything else?”

“No, nothing I can think of.  There’s a mix of ages and races.  Some have jobs.  Some don’t.”

I read her the other list.  “What about them?”

“No.  There’s nothing distinctive about them either.  Same sort of mix.”

She eventually more or less got it but only after I had pointed out that her sister and my two daughters were together in the list that she wasn’t in.  

What follows is, I’m afraid, a bit of an anti-climax.  I don’t have the answer.  It’s just that there are some women with whom I act and conduct myself quite differently from others and I suspect that that is true of the behaviour of all men.

On Friday evening we were in the company of a man who, for both Caroline and me, is a 4 or perhaps only a 3 on the scale.  We were with him really by accident, as I would certainly never suggest meeting him by design.

He told us all a story – an anecdote about his business dealings.  I can’t remember the details now because I stopped listening just after the scene of this “hilarious” episode in his life switched from New York to Zurich.

But I do remember the ‘punch line’: “As a result, I came out of it £30,000 on top.”

What an idiot!  All of my male friends – those who are 5s, 6s or 7 in the Scale - would only ever have told that story if the punch line had been: “As a result, I came out of it losing about thirty grand.”

So, the men of the world also fall into two broad categories:  those who are so far up their own arses that they can’t talk about themselves without showing off and the rest of us.  In other words, those who are self-aggrandising and those who are self-deprecating.

I think that there is something about self-deprecation that is very attractive and almost endearing.  I have just looked through the list of my rambles posted on this site over the last 18 months.  I reckon that out of the 65 posts there is only one in which I am the winner and that is when I managed to fool an eight-year-old boy into letting me have an attractive piece of rock for nothing when he was expecting to get at least $5.00 for it. (The Rock)

Caroline has suggested that the previous paragraph is in itself self-aggrandising but it isn’t as I am not suggesting for one moment that it is evidence that I am attractive or endearing but I do think it explains in some way why I have the male friends that I have.  As for the women that I am friendly with, I’ve absolutely no idea.  I like them all!