extreme naivete

For your reading pleasure, I will describe a recent conversation between myself and an intern in my workgroup. He and I sit in adjacent, four-person cubes, so this conversation was easily overheard by at least six other people.

Intern: "Ben, you have a girlfriend, right?"
Ben: "Yes."
Intern: "Have you ever made her mad?"

At this point, two things happened simultaneously. First, I just about fell off my chair laughing. Second, everybody within earshot turned around to look at the intern, trying to figure out whether he had really said what they thought they heard. This kid isn't /that/ young (21 yrs old, I believe); how is he still so naive as to ask such a question? He's even in a long-distance relationship, which by definition is a reasonably serious relationship. How is it possible that's he's never effed up before? Guys are hard-wired to do things that, through no fault of our own, piss off our mates. Anyway, the intern continues...

Intern: "Where's a good jewelry store around here?"

Here is where this post switches gears, and I move from questioning the intern's 'lady smarts' to decrying the ridiculous 'standards' to which relationships are held in modern America. What does it say about our society that a useless, pointless, worthless gift is supposed to help 'fix' a fight? The jewelers and florists love it, but it's a hot, steaming, Biff-enveloping load of crap. Even worse, the standard only goes one way; if a girl messes up, the guy doesn't get a Borla cat-back, or a new Xbox game, or a stack of Playboys.

The ideal, however, is not to expect the post-fight gift giving to go both ways. The ideal is to eliminate it. The two people involved should discuss the things that caused the fight and try to come to an agreement on those issues. An apology (or two) is probably a good idea, but gifts are not. As with lawsuits, fights are often a way to vilify your adversary and obtain some kind of payback, to which you feel you are entitled as the 'victim'. In reality, things are almost never so black and white. I'm not saying that blame is always 50:50 in every situation, but there /are/, to be terribly cliche, two sides to every story. Only by taking an objective look at both sides can you truly and justly 'solve' a dispute. Now, please return to your regularly scheduled laughing-at-the-dumb-intern. ;)