Girls love to subtly brag about having a lot of guy friends. Let's be honest with ourselves here, we all think it's so cool when we can talk about how drama-free we are because we hang out with more guys than we do girls. We think it makes us really attractive to be a bro and always have boys at our beck and call. But honestly, having a lot of guy friends is not always as glamorous as we make it out to be. The truth is, you end up dealing with a lot of stupidity and constantly have to step in and save the day when maturity and good decision-making skills are lacking. A lot of times, you're just a like a mom.
1. You have to clean things. Always.
Boys are usually extremely messy creatures. Every time I have my friends in my dorm room, I'm always left with some mess to clean up. They spill things, knock things over, move things and not put them back and get food literally everywhere. Most of the time they don't even notice they're doing it. And when they're not making a mess on my turf, they're begging me to help them clean something that they've messed up in their own room. If I had a dollar for every time that I've cleaned and organized my friends' dorm rooms just to have them messed up again within 24 hours, I could purchase a live-in maid for them!
2. They have no boundaries with you.
When you're in a friend group that is predominantly guys, they get really comfortable with you, really quickly. They'll change in front of you with no warning, tell you details about their night that you never wanted to know and ask you anything that's on their mind with absolutely no hesitation. They'll fart in front of you too. One time, my friend asked me to come into his room and smell a stain on his carpet to help him figure out if it was pee or not... unreal.
3. You have to feed them.
"Do you have food?" I hear this sentence out of the mouths of my guy friends more than I hear my own name. They're always hungry! I don't understand. We'll walk back from the dining hall and five minutes later they'll be raiding the snacks in my room. And somehow they can eat literally all day and not get fat. No food is off limits for them. I've seen my guy friends eat food off of the floor more times than I can count. I might as well start packing lunches for them.
4. You have to rush them.
If you find a boy who can stay on schedule, wife him up. They're rare. With my guy friends, "meet me in my room at 8 and we'll go" really means "meet my in my room at 8 so I can stand there on my phone for five minutes and then fix my hair in the mirror three times, make myself a drink, fuck around with my wallet for a few minutes, show you this new hat that I got the other day and then we'll go."
5. You take care of them when they're sick.
Whether my friends are actually sick or are getting sick after a night out, I'm somehow the one who the responsibility of keeping them alive falls on. I constantly have extra Nyquil and Emergen-C because I know that I will definitely be nagging them to take it so they can get better. In other cases, I'm the one who has to make sure they're laying on their side so they don't choke and die. The latter is definitely something that a mother would be pretty astonished to have to be doing, but it's all too normal for me.
6. You're critical of their girlfriends.
It's always a moment of truth when I meet the girl that one of my friends has been seeing. I know she's usually been instructed to impress me because my friends know they won't hear the end of it if I don't like her. I think very highly of my friends so I don't want their girlfriends to be sub-par. When I don't like a girl that one of my friends is dating, I tell them. Do I sound like a mother-in-law?
7. You have to make sure they look presentable.
Why do boys have such an issue with matching their clothes? It's really not that difficult. Also, PSA to my guy friends: it's never a good idea to wear things with stains on them. They sometimes have trouble grasping this concept. To be fair, some of them have a decent fashion sense, but even those guys will occasionally try to wear a patterned tie with a striped shirt. Some of them are just hopeless and like to wear the same huge Redskins jersey with stains on it six days in a row. I always have to make sure that they look alright when we're trying to do something nice, just like a mother would.
8. You get sad when they don't spend time with you.
All a mother ever wants is for her kids to spend time with her. I basically feel the same about my guy friends. It was a painful time for me when they were pledging fraternities and busy all the time. I really just wanted some damn attention.
9. You get disappointed in them when they make bad decisions.
It seriously gives me anxiety when my guy friends decide to go out the night before they have an exam, or when they start a paper the day before it's due. I've definitely given them motherly lectures about taking their school work seriously on multiple occasions. You can also find me running across the room at a party to intervene when one of them is about to do something dangerous. I think that phrase "dude, hold my beer while I..." will make me jump for the rest of my life. I think I've even mastered the 'disappointed mom look' for when they sleep through class or do something exceptionally dangerous.
10. You love them.
After making fun of them for the previous nine paragraphs, I have to get sappy for a second and say that I love my boys. Being one of the only girls in our predominantly male friend group definitely puts me in some interesting situations, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. Having had mostly guy friends for my whole life, I'm very familiar with the male antics and I'd probably be bored without them. I mother them because I care about them, and although they require a little extra care sometimes, I secretly love that they need me.
