Varying Degrees of Estrogen-Induced Craziness (I Miss Trapper Keepers)

Remember Trapper Keepers? (Of course you do. Mine was Little Mermaid. Jealous much?) Remember scribbling your potential married name (with said crush) all over it? And then crossing it all out, and scribbling the new potential married name all over that after you caught your crush holdings hands with ANOTHER WOMAN as he walked her to her locker?

Remember telling your girlfriends all about how you were going to marry 11 year old Davey Johnson when you grew up, and you would have lots of babies? Remember making him play house with you in the fort on the playground, and how he gave you a necklace he made for you in summer camp (and said it was red because that was the color of love,) and how he sent you romantic notes telling you how perfect it was that his birthday was one day before yours, because then he was just a little older than you, and isn’t that how it should be?

Yeah… um… I still do all that.

Okay, not quite. I don’t rock the Trapper Keeper anymore, and I no longer expect to be walked to my locker. And if I do dream about my wedding, it’s more about aesthetics (the dresses, flowers, color scheme, etc.) than about the guy. (I guess because I haven’t picked him out yet.)

But Facebook is the new yearbook. And upon deciding that I like like a guy, I do sort of switch into “playing house” mode… cooking dinner, doing annoying errands together that would otherwise be extremely boring, and “staying in” to watch pointless TV. And, as much as I hate to admit it… I can have gone on ONE date with a guy, decide that I like him, and all of a sudden the estrogen kicks in full force and the next thing I know I’m imagining out our entire lives together. Bringing him home to meet the parents? Check. Where we would live? Check. How we would raise our children? Check. (This is uber terrifying because I haven’t even admitted 100% to myself that I want kids. Let’s start with a dog…) What kind of dog we would get? Check. I may or may not think about how my name would sound if I changed it to his last name… Check.

You get the idea.

I know guys don’t think about this stuff. More importantly, I know they think that we’re crazy because we do. But here’s the thing, guys: we can’t help it. In fact, you should be worried if we’re not thinking about it. Because that? Means we’re just not that into you. (SO looking forward to that movie, btw!)

Sure, there are varying degrees of estrogen-induced craziness, depending on age, feminist leanings, domestic tendencies, where you grew up, the kind of marriage your parents had (or didn’t), etc. But ultimately, we’re all a little crazy.

(The real secret is, you men wouldn’t have it any other way…)