Mama shut the door and said, “Baby girl, I want to talk to you about men. There are some things you need to understand.”
Mama didn’t realize that her son was listening at the door. He could hear them but not always clearly. Nonetheless, the son learned as much from the conversation as the daughter.
To her daughter, Mama said, “Boys are going to try to have sex with you and every other girl they can. That’s all boys want. Girl, they don’t care about you as a person. They just think of you us as something to please them. There’s no point in expecting boys or men to care about you. They only want one thing.”
Through the door, what the son heard Mama say was, “Boys are to try to have sex with every girl they can. That’s all boys should want. Don’t care about a girl as a person. Just think of them as something to please you. They don’t expect you to care about them. Only want one thing.”
Mama continued talking to her daughter, “I know this may be hard for you to accept, but you need to know what it means to be with a man. I don’t want you to have sex, but you’re probably going to be a fast little something. So don’t you come up pregnant, because if you do, the boy’s gonna leave you. You can’t expect a man to stay around and take care of you just because you get pregnant by him.”
What the son heard was, “I know this may be hard for you to accept, but you need to what it means to be a man. I don’t want you to have sex, but all girls are fast little somethings. If one comes up pregnant, you gotta leave her. She won’t expect a man to stay around and take care of her just because she got pregnant by you.”
“And if you have a baby,” continued Mama to her daughter, “I’ll help you. I won’t trust you to take care of my grandbaby, so I’ll handle everything. You just try to enjoy the rest of your youth.”
The son heard, “If you have a baby, the girl’s Mama will handle everything. You just enjoy your youth.”
Mama continued talking to the daughter “And the boy who gets you pregnant, you can put him on child support if you want to, but I don’t want him coming around here sticking his nose in my family’s business.
What the son heard was, daughter “When you get a girl pregnant, if she doesn’t want you to, you won’t even have to pay child support. And nobody wants you to come around to see about the baby. Your child is not your business.”
Mama said, “You don’t need a man to take care of you.”
The son heard, “You don’t need to care of your woman.”
Mama said, “ You don’t need a man to help you raise your baby. “
The son heard, “A man doesn’t need to help raise his baby.”
Mama said, “Men are no good.”
Son heard, “You are no good.”
Mama said, “A woman just needs to find a rich man and get all she can while she can before he leaves her.”
Son heard, “Act like a rich man and get all you can from a woman before you leave her.”
Through the door separating the male from the females, the young man listened. The ladies on the other side didn’t understand how their conversation was being filtered and fed to the young man on the other side.
As they grew up, the daughter remembered this talk, and she lived her life according to the advice she had been given.
The young man did the same.
For generations we have been delivering these messages to our daughters, never thinking that our sons were listening, too.
HAPPY FATHER’S DAY
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