Killing the mean myth

Vandaag heb ik in de zon met @mayralouise heel hard gelacht. Heel hard zonder pause voor 15 minuten. En dat kwam zo:

Ik: “Praat gewoon Nederlands, hoor, ik moet het echt oefenen.”
Zij: “Maar je praat het toch!”
Ik: “Ja maar zodra ik een woord niet kenn switch ik gewoon naar het Engels. Doe ik altijd, moet ik echt mee stoppen”
Zij: “Doe rustig, komt goed”

[praat praat, klets, klets over talen en culturen en het schrijven in vreemde talen]

Ik: “Dutch people are very well in English, this much is sure. Germans don’t know the language as well as you guys do. It’s not even comparable”
Zij: “True”
Ik: “It’s a disaster actually”
Zij i: “Ja. And all this dubbing of films. They synchronise everything on German TV because of all those illiterates in your country, right?”

20 minutes later I was able to breathe again. She explained me, that somebody had told her this bullshit she actually had believed.

Since I felt the urge to let Mayra feel and know that we all live with those myths not knowing at all that they are myths I told her my “illiterate story”.

One or two years ago, I don’t remember to whom I talked, I had the following dialogue:

I: “Yes, it’s true. PMS and menstruation isn’t always easy to handle.”
Man: “It can be quite painful …”
I: “Can be, yes. But you guys suffer too ….”
Man: “What do you mean?”
I: “From your erections”
Man: “From our erections?”

I was 20 and very very much in love with my first boyfriend who constantly wanted to make love to me. Which was fine, but also quite tiring, especially in the mornings. One of those mornings he told me “It’s ok when you don’t want to have sex. But I am telling you, it does hurt.” I didn’t understand what he meant, so he explained it to me. He told me, that MEN suffer from PAIN when they don’t find no way to get rid of their morning erection through sex.

This is 20 years ago and God knows that I had quite some occasions to reveal this impertinent lie. But for some reason it never happened. I cannot count how often I thought to myself “What a brave and dear man. He leaves me alone having my coffee and doesn’t bother me, even though he is having pain now”

Tja.