Guy Words vs Gal Words

I have finally come to terms with the fact, and painfully so, that my social skills need a little bit of polishing. Ouch!
I dreadfully suspect that I am one of those individuals who are nondescriptly labelled social late-bloomers, aka nerds; the socially-deviant species with an extremely high affinity for technical facts & figures and other technocratic bragging rights and appear to possess an unbearable 'book-long' knowledge about everything but absolutely nothing about street-wise social skills. Certain facts and obvious social issues which are common knowledge to almost everybody who has lived on planet earth in the last hundred years are only now creeping in on me. Lol
Come to think of it, my nerdy self has been busy trying to master the so-called ‘critical’ skills, but has, until now, been totally oblivious to the fact that social skills are the fundamental tools needed to function effectively in every facet of society.
Excellence in, for example, computational mathematics and other high-end technical skills without the relevant social skills will only lead to intellectual frustration.
One of the ‘discoveries’ I have recently made, concerns the different baskets of common vocabulary of men and women. I have all along assumed that guys and gals mean the same thing when they use the same words.
The truth is that the intentions behind the use of many words are gender-specific. Which means that, guys and gals ‘comprehend’ words differently and therefore may use similar words to convey entirely different meanings.
I am told that many managers, these days, take their time to make sure that their speeches and presentations are packed with gender-neutral terms to really get across the gender divide.
Makes me wonder if I did really 'understood' any of the conversations I ever had with any member of the opposite sex and in the same way whether they understood me the way I intended.
I really believe that the number one reason why there are so many break-ups in relationships is the way the two sexes (mis)communicate to each another.
I really hope one day someone will make a gender-specific dictionary so that guys like me can somehow understand the meaning of some of the gal-words that I hear around me.


Just this week, two ladies were heard making similar remarks about two male colleagues around the office.
They called those fine gentlemen … erhm, j.e.r.k.s!
Then it hit me that I have never heard a guy use that word before to describe a woman or another man.
I suspect that ‘jerk’ is a gal-word. One of the killer words in the female vocabulary toolbox which, in my mind, girls use to convey an idea of a low life, the lowest form of the male specie. A disgusting piece of work to the female species.
However to my male soul, that word, jerk, whatever it means, does not convey an idea of utter disgust at all. In fact I have to admit that when a woman calls a man a jerk, the picture I get is a really fine gentleman who is completely misunderstood by women. Period!
Seriously, when a gal calls a guy a jerk my mind ‘sees’ a guy that finds it difficult to understand the female psychology, but otherwise a perfectly normal chap. In my mind, any decent man can be called a jerk simply because he has not mastered the fine art of dealing with the opposite sex.
It appears to me that most of the women who resort to that term do so because of an ugly experience with a man or men.
I guess women in general have certain inherent expectations of manliness in terms of attitudes, conducts, ambitions and how men are supposed to treat a woman.
The guy who scores anything below that imaginary baseline in the head of the fairer sex is unfortunately called a jerk.


Guys on the other hand use terms like bimbo to describe some women.A bimbo is perhaps the female equivalent of a jerk. Don’t get me wrong I am only guessing. Besides, I said perhaps!When a guy calls a woman a bimbo, what goes through his mind is a sort of hare-brained creature crawling all over the place seeking for some guy to grind her good.
A materialistic woman without any values whatsoever ; a woman solely given to creature comforts without any aspirations beyond the mundane issues of life.
A bimbo is that non-wife material that hangs around the corner in different seductive poses.I really doubt that a woman understands that term in the same way as a guy does.

So guys and gals share with me the guy-words and gal-words you often use.
As a guy, I really would like the ladies to paint clearly to me, beyond the dictionary-speak, the following:
(a) what sort of guy would you call a ‘jerk’?

(b) do you always call every man who breaks up with you a ‘jerk’?

(c) what goes through your mind and body when you use that term to describe a guy?

I am so keen to learn this sort of rocket science for the purpose of self-education as well as being a mentor to others in my corner.
Please help a late bloomer!

We Have A Nerd In The Golden Jubilee House

Today, 7 January 2009, the presidency of the Republic of Ghana has changed hands, after a solemn and colourful ceremony, from J A Kuffour(JAK) to John Atta-Mills(JAM), the quiet, charisma-bypassed technocrat with a penchant for dogged inconspicuousness.
Unlike JJ Rawlings, who loved to have the headlights exclusively focused upon himself, John Atta-Mills by comparison likes to stay behind the scenes.
An almost avowed style of embellished silence coupled with a preference for invisibility defines this former Professor of law. A style that blends quintessentially Ghanaian humility with a streak of disguised discomfort for the limelight, JAM is first and foremost a nerd.
The average Ghanaians is used to the cowboy antics of JJ and JAK’s iffy “fa ma nyame” approach to dealing with difficult situations, however the uber-scholarly disposition of JAM has not been witnessed in Ghana’s realpolitik since the days of KA Busia, K Nkrumah, JB Danquah et al.
What are we to expect from The JAM presidency?
Is JAM a big-ideas person in the mould of K Nkrumah?
So far he has not manifested the characteristic traits of such a predisposition. Is he going to be a practitioner of classical social democratic ideology? I hope he does. However, in my opinion, he does not have the luxury of time and space to do so given the constraints of the Ghanaian economy and the unrealistic expectations of the masses.
Will he be able to bring about the socio-economic transformation of Ghana that he promised? A transformational leader he certainly is not, but if he is able to bring about some measure of positive change without destroying the foundations set by the outgoing administration I will be pleasantly surprised.
The restless wannabes in the NDC will try their damnedest to ride roughshod over everything JAK and the NPP stood for in the past eight years. Generalissimo is already waiting in the wings for the red carpet to be rolled out for him. Hopefully the true democrats within the JAM government will stand their ground from day one. The task ahead is to better the lot of Ghanaians and not the building of a platform to dramatise the hatred of JAK and the NPP.
To The Nerd-in-Chief Himself
The JAM presidency, I presume, will be characterised by a great deal of pragmatic equipoising. However as Ghanaians are not particularly known for tolerance for long-term economic policies, any attempt to employ long-tenured economic models, will be misconstrued as non-performance and the government may risk being voted out of office in the next election.
There is another lesson in the political history of Ghana that JAM needs to learn fast. And that is: every time a government had tried to implement an economic program that called for any measure of sacrifice on the part of the masses, they were voted out of office in the next election. We are allergic to all forms of sacrifice. The secret is that you must do the hard stuff whilst we enjoy the fruits of your labour with reckless abandon.
Mr president, don’t count on Ghanaians to tarry for you if you intend going for a long furlough on the mountain to workout the blueprints for our economic salvation.
We are simply a myopic and impatient bunch.
Whatever your plans, keep one thing in mind: the manna must start falling now!
Last lesson, JAM. Your tendency of overly relying on your NDC pals to take the initiative while you sneak out to cool off, as you did during the campaigns, could lead to a lapse of presidential oversight in your administration.
Hopefully you will stay at the helm of government now that you are the Head of state, Commander-in-Chief as well as Head of government.
In the final analysis, Ghanaians will be the arbiters of the JAM presidency in 2012.

I wish JAM, his government and Ghana the best of luck.
Bon Voyage Mr president!!!