My Favorite Experience

A boy longs for connection at the same time he feels the need to pull away, and this opens up an emotional divide. This struggle between his need for connection and his desire for autonomy finds different expression as a boy grows. But, regardless of their age, most boys are ill-prepared for the challenges along the road to becoming an emotionally healthy adult. Whatever role biology plays (and that role is by no means clear) in the ways boys are characteristically different from girls in their emotional expression, those differences are amplified by a culture that supports emotional development of girls and discourages it for boys. Stereotypical notions of masculine toughness deny a boy his emotional resources. We call this process,

On November 19th, 2016, My family and I were going to Western Michigan University. We were heading off to watch the football and hockey game, my father told me it would take a few hours. Hours went flying by it felt like we were in a race car, we finally arrived hours later. We went straight to the dining area, it smelled like fresh made pasta and many more thrilling smells. As we made our way through the crowd, we found a table to sit at. Afterwards when we found a seat, we went darting off in many directions to look at all the food stations. Few minutes passed by when we all swarm like bees back to the table. We all seated and started eating, we talked about what we got for food.

I started playing volleyball in 6th grade. My friend Abagail had wanted me to play for our school, so she would have one friend on the team. From there I wasn’t sure if I wanted to play volleyball. I had never watched volleyball and never played it either.

To start with, ever since I was in kindergarten, it was always easier for me to empathize more with boys than with girls. I would rather like to play with the dirt than with dolls. I considered girls to be wimps. I loved adventures, mysteries, video games and games that required a lot of physical activity and the boys were the ones I could relate to

Growing up, I lived the life of grass stained knees and an almost perpetually sweaty face. I will never be ashamed of the fact that I have been and always will be a tomboy through and through. If I wasn’t getting dirty at my local baseball field being that my Father was the president of the Pony League then I was finding trouble at the football fields of my local Pop Warner, because as you may have guessed my Father was the president of that too. As you can see my family had their hands full and I can’t help it if boys and sports raised me. Being that boys constantly surrounded me, I saw first hand the struggle of the emotional divide between yearning for both connection and independence. Boys want affection and understanding but at the same time are afraid of the stigma they may receive from both their peers and even their mentors.

We grew up in the early 2000s—a time when Carter and I would spend hours creating pieces of Lego art and when we loved the impossibly square yellow sponge who lived in the ocean. We were similar to other boys our age, of course, in the way that we chased girls on the playground but also tried to avoid them, or we’d get their cooties. Actually, we tended to stay away from girls in general; most often, we played by ourselves. Sometimes, we’d sneak our Game Boys to school and play games during recess. Pokémon was the shit back then… but we grew out of that pretty quickly when the Mario Bros. game came out on the Nintendo DS, which we received as gifts

Growing up, I didn’t always conform to the normal little girl ways set by my society. I had Barbie dolls but I also had Pokémon, Dinosaurs, and Ninja turtle toys. The social gender norm for girls would be tea parties and Barbie dolls, while boys would have dinosaurs and car toys. Though, I had a little bit of everything, as an only child I had a choice of what I thought I liked better. My parents didn’t choose what was right for me, and I didn’t so much care about what other kids had. I also started a sport very young, I joined a swim team because my dad taught me how to swim at the age of five and I adored it. Ever since then I started playing outdoors and I grew up playing basketball and football with the neighbor boys. Therefore, I always had the mindset that girls could do anything that boys could do, and gender didn’t matter in most cases. Unlike the common belief that boys or men in general are better, or more superior. My parents raised me on a more neutral level and it changed my views from the social “norm”.

As a child growing up I found it easier to play and communicate with boys although I also played and communicated with girls the communication seem different and harder to understand. Boys were like let’s play ball or let’s play with my toy trucks and the playing would commence on the other hand when I played with girls they would say would you like to play house I would say sure reluctantly because I didn’t like this. Then we would have to figure out who was the mom or dad of course I would be the dad and off to work I would go then enter just about as soon as I would exit and say honey I am home what’s for dinner. My friend would say pizza and we would begin eating she would talk and talk and I would listen. This was so boring for me and

When my mother's water broke, my father was anxious to see his newborn son. As he laid eyes on me, his first born child, he claimed, " A girl? Why a girl? Put her back where she came from!" When my mother recalled this story, I cried. I finally understood why my father looks down upon me. He believes that I am less than the boy he expected to have.

To compensate for his disappointment, I became a tomboy. By 4th grade, I was officially one of the “guys”. I was always the first one to be chosen for a sports team. I wore loose pants, tied my hair up in a ponytail and I was never afraid to get bruises and scratches on my porcelain skin. By 5th grade I wanted to show my dad how “manly” I could be and decided to work with him at his office.

At

Growing up I was considered a “tom boy”. There was nothing wrong with me, but at the time I preferred to play football, eat dirt, pick up bugs and fight the guys rather than being inside the house to play with Barbie dolls. In my defense growing up there were eight of us, six guys and two girl which included me. If you base things on demographics there were more boys than girls. The fellas just seemed to have much more excitement getting filthy or even playing video games. The odd thing is, I could hang with them. But as a girl I did paint my nails, wear skirts and dresses, and have bangs in my hair. I did not realize until later that I could hang with the guys comfortably with no problems and still be able to meet the female expectations,

Children at a very young age learn that there are differences between boys and girls. During my childhood years, gender expectations had the greatest impact on me. I can remember my older brother playing paintball with his friends. All the neighborhood boys would come over to our house with their paintball guns and ammunition to target objects and each other. My parents encouraged these masculine activities for him. As for me, I played with

Knowing that I didn’t have any older siblings that were girls nor did I have girl cousins, it was slightly hard for me to just have a girly girl mindset. As I got older playing “boyish” sports became a custom to me. By that time, it was going to be hard for anyone to break me from that. The I went into elementary looking to play the sports I was used to playing. Unfortunately,

As a child, I was under the impression that as a girl you wore dresses, loved the colors pink and purple, and played with dolls. I am not sure if that was because those are the thing I chose to do as a child, or if it was a result of the things I was surrounded by and heard while growing up, although it was probably a combination of both. I distinctly remember the day my mom asked me whether I wanted to take ballet or soccer. I adamantly told her that I wanted to take ballet because soccer was for boys. She told me that both boys and girls played soccer, however, that didn’t change my mind. I was a “girlie girl,” and I don’t believe anything anyone could have done would have changed that. In third grade, there was a boy in my ballet class. While we were told by our ballet teacher that many boys take dance classes, many of us girls found it strange at first. He continued dancing at our studio for a few years, and I later

One of the most exhilarating moments of my entire life was my very first time at a roller coaster theme park. Growing up I would always see commercials on television of children and adults alike having a sparkling Colgate smile on their faces and enjoying themselves, so when my family decided we were going to Islands of Adventure for vacation. I was like a child who just received a cookie out of the cookie jar. Even though I was 21 years old at the time, I was extremely trilled. I packed my luggage like a stuff turkey on Thanksgiving Day and I was ready to take on this adventure.

As a foodie, eating foods is my favorite thing and I also find my speciality in eating, that is tasting food and know the condiment in every dishes. When I was a child, I usually go to kitchen to see adults cooking. My intention is not to learn how to cook, but to know where the dishes that I felt very delicious from out of curiosity. As time passed, I knew the recipe of every dishes that I like gradually and learned how to improve it taste. I born at a country that have many delicious foods and the cuisine like to use many kinds of condiments. Through the process of knowing the recipe of cuisine, I also learned many condiments and their use.