Equality
The Great Responsibility Crisis of the American Male
I’d like to see the bell curve of men and responsibility. Quick, someone give me a chart…
Here we go again…
It’s been another week where I would sit back and watch a painfully irresponsible male making bad decisions that anyone with even the slightest bit of foresight could see coming.
Full disclosure, it might seem like I’m complaining about men a lot to score points or to garner clicks, likes, and follows.
I assure you, I am not.
On the contrary, I vent about the shortcomings of men a lot because of how immensely those shortcomings have impacted the entirety of my life.
And I think we can do better.
Whether it’s the men who sat by idly while my mother worked to the bone on my childhood, the men who I once called friends who’ve now become unrecognizable conspiracy cranks, or the men who’ve grown old, lonely, cold, angry, and bitter because of their conflicts with women, the men of my life have more consistent and reliable been a letdown.
Even worse, they’re often arrogant, self-entitled, and when pressed on these facts, they turn to hostility.
Most of my friends are women. There are some solid dudes out there, and I won’t pretend there aren’t.
My close male friends are some of the most stand-up people you could imagine, and I love them.
But on the whole? I’m so tired of constantly being expected to cater to the fraudulent brags of the narcissistic pomp of the fragile male ego all the time.
I’m similarly burnt out on having to constantly pick up the pieces of the messes left behind by irresponsible guys who are too focused on themselves to pay attention to anyone or anything else.
Case in point…
Recently, a friend reached out and asked for some help. We haven’t seen him in nearly ten years, but this guy goes way back. He lives out of state. He never took care of a DUI he got a decade ago in Florida.
They put him on probation and told him to pay fines. He completed the probation and didn’t pay the fines. He had a chip on his shoulder.
He believed, “that’s how they get you,” saying, “the government only exists to take your money — that’s why I’m not going to give it to them.”
Now they’ve suspended his license back in his home state.
He drives a truck for work.
His whole life will be upended if he doesn’t get this straightened out.
So, he asked to spend the night at our house so he could turn himself in for the outstanding warrant he has for the unpaid fines.
Even though we’ve all spent the last two years on perpetual lockdown, because we’re caretakers for an 82-year-old woman who’s paralyzed (and thus in an extremely high-risk pool), we decided to let him stay.
It would only be one night. We mask up. Everyone’s vaccinated. We’ve seen enough COVID carnage for one lifetime, and we’re not taking any unnecessary risks, especially not with a paralyzed person who has no choice but to reside under our roof and live with our decisions.
He expected to get released the next day and have to go to court a few weeks after that. The process would be simple, he’d go in for a few hours, he’d get released — or he’d bail out — and schedule another court appearance to take care of his warrant.
Except…the jail held him…
Predictable.
You don’t have to be Nostradamus to have foreseen this.
Did this guy really think he was going to just show up after a ten-year-old warrant, waltz into the jail, and they’d smile, shake his hand, and let him go the next day?
Technically, in the law’s eyes, he was on the run for ten years.
But that didn’t even register in his mind.
Imagine feeling so entitled that you actually believe they’ll just let you out because you’re you, and you don’t think what you did is a big deal.
While he was in there, he kept in touch with us and some friends over the phone. He was trying to figure out when he could expect to be let out to get back to regular life.
His friend texted to notify us that he’d tested positive for COVID-19.
None of us are sick, and everyone is safe. But still…never underestimate the power of other people’s irresponsibility.
We’re understandably pissed. He put family members at risk, especially someone in an extremely high-risk category. He didn’t even think twice about it.
He was wrapped up in his own little world the whole time — and he still is.
Now, after a few weeks, they’ve let him out. He slept outside last night, and now he’s trying to figure out where to stay because, predictably, the jail kept his physical driver’s license (that’s been suspended). Most places are telling him he needs an ID to get a room.
So let me get this straight…
You thought that, after ten years of being on the run from the law, you could just show up from out of state, get in touch with the cops, go into jail, and be released the very next day in the middle of a pandemic, complete with quarantines, testing, etc.?
Ready for the kicker?
The day before he arrived, he thought, “Maybe I should get vaccinated,” and did that the day before he arrived, two days before he went into jail.
He told us he was vaccinated. He didn’t tell us he got the first shot the day before coming down.
All I can think is how I would’ve handled the situation. First thing’s first, I’d have hired a lawyer. It would’ve been much cheaper than the rental car he got to drive to Florida to handle it in person.
See if the lawyer can settle it from afar. If they can’t, you’ll have a much better chance of going in and out in under 24 hours with a lawyer representing you.
If you absolutely must turn yourself in…
Get vaccinated before you drive (illegally, mind you) across the country to go crash at your friend’s house and turn yourself in. Give yourself two weeks to build up a good immunity, knowing it’s a possibility that you’ll end up in jail for quite some time, and you definitely don’t want to have COVID-19 in jail.
You also don’t want to, as he’s done, put your friends at risk without being even slightly concerned with their safety. And there’s the rub.
That’s the crux of this whole issue that the pandemic has really brought to light…
A lot of people assume that their risk tolerance is the only “right” risk tolerance. To them, if they’d take a risk, well, by God, that means you should be willing to take the same risk.
They don’t understand that our perceptions of risk differ — they especially differ in the information age, where people are often operating with different sets of facts.
COVID-19 has demonstrated, live, in real-time, for all of us to see, that we all have very different ideas of what constitutes “risky” behavior. So it follows that we all have very different ideas of what might be considered “responsible” behavior.
And the solution is consent. It’s really not that hard to figure out whether or not someone else is on the same page as you. It’s simple, ask! Talk to them about it. Give them the details and see if they see things from the same perspective you do.
And don’t demand that they bend to your perspective of the world.
We need to start accepting other people’s worldviews as long as they aren’t demonstrably harmful.
I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like trying to find a date among these guys.
I really understand what women mean when they throw around terms like “emotional labor” and talk about Peter Pan Syndrome. And while people of any gender or sex can be a handful, in my life, most men have been a special kind of obnoxious.
It’s time we embrace change, guys. It’s time to grow up.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy the one below. If you haven’t, be sure to sign up for Medium here. You’ll get access to thousands of writers like me, and you’ll be able to see all of my future stories.
