I am crowing about today being day #2!

Cock a Doodle Doo

Last year my wife and I went to St. John in the US Virgin Islands.  It was a fantastic vacation with only one thing that wasn’t great; cocks.  We were staying in a beautiful cottage that was up a steep road, overlooking Coral Bay. Down below were small homes of full timers who lived and worked on the island. And they all had roosters. A lot of roosters. And all these cocks crowed. Some didn’t just crow when the sun rose. A few started crowing at about 2am and they didn’t stop crowing sometimes until maybe 6pm.  That is a lot of crowing.  Luckily it was an almost an imperceptible background noise during the day. It was only at night that it was annoying, waking us up. We unfortunately had to close the sliding glass door to muff the sound instead of being able to enjoy the beautiful night air.

Cocky Men

It occurred to me that this all day cock crowing was an appropriate analogy for some men.  Some men crow when they get up, some men crow at other parts of the day. But there are some men who just crow all the time.  They might crow incessantly because they are horny, or angry, or insecure, or power hungry or something else. But the one thing they all have in common, no matter their root motivation, is they want all the attention all the time. And they think they deserve it.  ‘The world revolves around me and deservedly so’ is their spoiled thought.

Enabling 

Where does this come from?  If I had to guess, it would often be from an enabling mom and dad.  The mom feeds the boy everything they need, always making them the center of attention, never demanding they share the limelight with others, or share the work load of life.  It’s a peculiar form of enabling and spoiling mothers can sometimes do (it’s not restricted to boys, girls can be raised the same way).  And how do dads contribute to this? By being a grown up little boy, also not sharing the limelight or the workload.

Another reason is very likely simple hormones.  A horny guy is going to crow. He may not crow about sex, as a matter of fact he probably won’t be crowing about sex, but he is likely going to crow about something; maybe work, maybe family, maybe sports. In other words, men can be real dicks until there is some resolution (or distraction) for his issue.  This isn’t about all men of course, but it’s about enough men to make it worth taking note.

Sexual Assault and Rape

If it was just a lot of talk, it would be bad enough, but in light of all the college campus and church issues of sexual assault and rape (to name just two areas of concern) you can see it leads to not just blustering talk, but to terrible and damaging actions as well. It’s not a good thing and men need to take notice of it as a real and dangerous character trait of entitlement that needs to be put in it’s place by men who see it in action among their friends.

Who the Sun Actually Rises For

I have four daughters so I can’t say exactly what I would do with a son. But I have a pretty good idea that I would make sure he understood that the sun actually rose to greet his mother, not him, and he sure as heck better help his mom (and the rest of the family) if he wants to share some of that light.

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Drawing and Commentary by Marty Coleman

Quote by George Eliot, 1819-1880, English author.  George Eliot was the pen name for Mary Ann Evans.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

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He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow