Sorry to disagree with you, but it really doesn't matter how "mature" a girl may seem. High school girls -- and even freshman, sophomore, and sometimes junior college women -- have a tremendous amount of growing up to do. There's just no overstating it. She's not an adult yet -- not by age, not by experience, not by understanding.
But from the looks of the way you publish your entire private life through conversations on your facebook wall, you're not any more mature than she probably is. So, I don't see a proverbial age gap between you ... simply a literal one.
OK. Fantastic. First off, this is the kind of thing that makes me seriously consider disabling anonymous contents, as I don't like people being able to say things without some way for me to identify them. It doesn't really seem like a beneficial trade for me. And seeing as it's my blog, I should be the one to call the shots here...
Secondly, wow. I'm pretty sure you wrote that just to take a swipe at me on the Internet. And in that, you succeeded. Bravo. But what am I going to do? Respond anyway, even though the actual chances of you reading this are not great.
You took the maturity thing either out of context, or completely straw manned it. I'm not sure which. I didn't see she's ready to lead a multinational corporation. What I am saying is that I find her intellectual maturity and sense of perspective beyond what one would expect from her age. In some cases, even my age. Suffice to say I thought she was older when I first met her.
Also, making blanket statements about women like that seems to be a pretty stupid thing to do. How in the world do you know what everyone has experienced? My mother was 19 when I popped out of the birth canal (there's your mental image for the day). According to you, Mr. Anonymous Poopy Pants McJerk, I should have died from exposure while she was shopping at Woolworth's. She managed to do pretty OK for herself. So let's not make dumb statements like that again, deal?
Heck, we all have growing up to do. Who doesn't know that? I'm 23, and I still feel like a neophyte in the world.
I have to say, the Facebook statement kind of mystifies me. This is where I think you're just taking a shot at me. What, exactly, is wrong with sharing my life with my friends? I don't like secrets. I believe in the openness of information and keeping secrets away. If that's immaturity, I'm content with that. I will contend that is a sophisticated view on such matters, however. Furthermore, these people are my friends, and they have every right and interest to know what's going on with me. Openness is what friendship is all about. But because you live in a lead bunker somewhere off the coast of St. Thomas, you wouldn't know that.
Bob Woodward gave a speech here Wednesday. Hold on, let's wait for my graduated Scripps friends to stop swearing at the screen. OK, done? Great. Fi, who is on track to have a building named after her someday, got a personal meeting of sorts with him and an autograph for Tim. He's a pretty good speaker, as one would expect from the most prominent journalist in history, arguably. He also answered some questions (he took Tim's, which was fun). Most of the speech was centered around his work with the three Bush books, and his interviewing the president during the process of writing them. He made a few jokes about Bush, of course, but the crowd started to annoy me when they laughed at things that weren't jokes. Woodward said Bush gave "short, direct answers" to his questions, and half the audience laughed. Why? Stop looking for things to criticize him about. That certainly wasn't a joke, that was a statement of fact. He gives terse answers. How does that make him stupid? It doesn't. It's just his speaking style, and he gets unreasonably skewered for it. Don't we have enough things to attack him on anyway?
One thing of note was the last question Woodward asked to Bush. He asked the president how history would judge Bush's presidency. George shrugged, and said, I don't know. Nobody does. We'll all be dead.
As you can expect, this answer didn't go over well with the crowd. Apparently Hillary Clinton, when asked the same question, said she would write it herself. Well, that's super, but let's go back to Bush's response. It sounds lame, but I think it's surprisingly wise. We don't know. I think just now we're getting to see the long-term effects of the Reagan presidency. Truman in his own time was hated, now he's lauded as a great leader. So we really don't know. I'm sure had Al Gore said it, though, it would have been received much better. So be it.
He made himself available afterwards, and I shook his hand. And you know what? Bob Woodward has a weak handshake. I could not have been more disappointed. This is a guy that presidents fear, and I got the fish. Boo. But I bet he appreciates the openness of information.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a weekend ahead of me with the Viking Princess that I must get to.
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I don't think I'll ever be done swearing at the screen after reading that.
Actually, Hillary Clinton never said "I'll write it." That was Woodward's projection of what she would say, if posed the question, which I find extremely weird; since when do journalists project what newsmakers could be quoted as saying? I get the nature of his point, but it gave the impression of endorsement. Whether that was deliberate, I don't pretend to know.
Aaaaaand, I'm pretty sure that Woodward did in fact intend for those statements to be jokes. Hence, he noticeably paused for effect before the audience began chortling. But, you're right, I'm not convinced he meant for them to be taken the way they were. I think he was merely poking fun at the way Bush is characterized for talking -- the way he poked fun at the Billster seconds earlier for giving notoriously long-winded ones. And speaking of long-winded ... I'm going to end my comment now.
I believe that the comment you were getting angry about talking of how you were immature, is immature in itself. The person writing it didn't want you to know who they were so therefore they are immature in the fact that they don't even have the courage to stand beside their own words.
The comment was just somebody covering up for their own insecurities. Every person has different experiences and the generalization that was made of immaturity by not just age but gender? The factual evidence behind that is something I would like to see.
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