Oh, I love dodge ball! While my female classmates were stragglers in the back, I loved to play rough with the boys in the front of the line. They would try to intercept the ball to protect me and I would tend to them like fallen heroes if they were hit. They tolerated me if only because I would haul them to the sidelines like a nurse at the front lines assisting an injured warrior.

While I think our son should learn to cook and sew because he needs some basic adult survival skills, I would never ask him to sit down at the quilting circle. Go outside and make a lot of noise, will ya? Here’s some more blankets for that blanket fort that has grown and expanded across the first floor of the house. Don’t fall asleep on watch, kiddo. We’re counting on you. For a perimeter defense, we’ll set up the tent in the yard - don’t forget to write your mother. She worries!

As feminists scream about the evil in the world that has been wrought by swaggering, conquest-bent males of the species, I think they fail to understand that women could not have done the same job. Women have other jobs to do in the grand scheme of things - let the men run around and conquer lands and people, paving the way for their womenfolk to then begin the process of "civilizing" what remains. Victor Davis Hanson (I’m paraphrasing here) says something along the lines of Romans were not merely conquerors, they were obliterators? Creative destruction - like the boys lighting matches to torch their paper and pencils, the exercise forced them to bond in a way that may not have occured otherwise. And those poor sensitivity counselors could not have purposely set up a better scenario for that male bonding ritual if they tried.

I am fortunate to have a husband who does housework and goes shopping with me and I engage in mortal combat with the yard and home renovation projects with him. It is domestic survival at its best. Sewing? Quilting? Cross stitch? Cooking? My calling. He will admire my projects and do dishes after dinner, but he is rarely introspective, doesn’t "journal" and never needs to be in touch with his feelings or his feminine side. Ahh...refreshing. You go, guy!