I want to talk about a childhood friend of mine, let’s call him JT. I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about him, and he doesn’t overlap with any of my other friends. He didn’t live close by, we went to different schools, and I only knew him because our parents were friends; so I’m not sure any of my other friends ever even met him.
JT was probably the most redneck friend I’ve ever had. His dad was a mechanic, and JT grew up around cars. My parents went through an outdoorsy phase, joining a Jeep club and occasionally going camping, and JT’s parents were part of the same activities. One time JT showed me how to catch crawdads in his creek and cook them on the grill. So I have a tendency to associate JT with “manly” things, even though he was just as much a dork as I was.
He was a good guy, at least he was when I was around. I like to think I was a good influence on him. The problem was, he was like this blank slate with no strong opinions of his own. He had this older stepbrother who was extremely misogynistic and racist. JT didn’t actually live with his stepbrother, in fact he probably saw his stepbrother about as often as he saw me. But I could always tell when he’d recently spent time around his stepbrother.
The first few hours of our visits together often felt like a deprogramming session. It occurs to me now that his stepbrother probably felt the same way. I remember one time talking about Scarlett from GI Joe, and he said, “You know that’s all wrong, right? Women can’t actually do all that stuff.”
“All what stuff?”
“You know, all the running and jumping and firing guns and driving tanks and stuff.”
Now, GI Joe really wasn’t the most realistic cartoon in the world, and the characters probably did do a few things that were impossible in real life. And at that age, I probably didn’t know the difference. But I did tell him that he was wrong, and that women could do anything men could do.
Looking back, I’m actually not sure why I was so enlightened at that age. Not trying to toot my own horn or anything. Seriously, I was wrong about a ton of other issues. And I’m not saying I was a born feminist, either; believe me I had plenty of sexist opinions. But I really did tell JT he was wrong on this one.
I’ve always thought of myself as wishy-washy and indecisive, and to some extent it’s true. But the truth is, I really do have strong opinions on a lot of issues, and right or wrong, I’ve been that way my entire life. Even today, I have some friends who only seem to parrot the opinions of whoever they’ve most recently spoken to, and other friends who are quite secure in their beliefs and opinions. I’m definitely the latter, but I do wonder if that’s how others see me.
It's weird. "They say" that people are either Leaders or Followers. I am definitely not a leader. I will never consider myself a leader. But I also do my own thing. I rarely follow the same path the people around me. I identify more with the Followers than the Leaders, but I don't really follow anybody. I can't decide if I'm actually a Leader with no Followers, or a Follower without a Leader.
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