You know, it’s not too unusual, in this happy, congenial world we live in, for two columnists at the same newspaper to have completely and utterly dissimilar opinions on the same topic.

Such is the case that I am hereby faced with. Last Wednesday, my colleague Peggy Byrne wrote a piece on male vs. female bonding. She said things like, men tend to bond over beer, cigars, poker games and lewd vocabulary, while females tend to bond over vanilla extract and candy binges.

Peggy, Peggy, oh, sweet Peggy … I beg to differ. For you see, as I write this, it is late Saturday afternoon and my friends—all of them female—are at their home getting ready to bond with approximately six kegs, a 40,000 watt stereo and all the willing participants of either gender they can find.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but vanilla extract just kind of pales in comparison. The way I see it, the pressures associated with college life affect both genders in much the same way. Thus, it just makes sense that these same pressures should find the same outlets.

I think the problem here is not one of bonding, but one of gender roles and how people perceive them. In this case, the differences seem to be those of the glaring variety.

Peggy mentioned in her column that “guys will drink more beer than you thought humanly possible.” I think an introduction to my roommates is in order. She also mentions that women tend to end their evenings at 11 o’clock. I can’t say I completely disagree. That is, if you tack an a.m. to the end of that statement.

Now I’m not trying to pick on Peggy here. Nor am I a latent observer of the Gloria Steinem code of living. It’s just that I have a problem with this whole Barbie Doll complex that I see a lot of people falling into.

Men are men, women are women and I still like having doors opened for me and all that chivalrous stuff. And in turn, I try not to belch in public or pick my nose on the first date. But we have to draw the line somewhere.

It’s true, I can’t say a lot of my female friends spend a great deal of time playing poker—generally because they tend to be a bit more hyperactive. But a few of them have, on occasion, smoked worse than cigars and as far as crude vocabulary goes … call me a demented English major, but I take pride in being equally well-versed in the more blatantly grotesque colloquialisms.

Maybe it has something to do with the way in which people are brought up differently. Maybe Peggy really enjoyed all those after-school play sessions with the mini-kitchenette. As for me and my companions, we decided at an early age that Fisher Price appliances and Chatty Cathy dolls just weren’t our bag.

That’s when I started hanging out with good ol‘ dad and learned about the finer things in life—like BB guns and sports cars. What I may lack in typical “femininity” I make up for in pure, unadulterated fun. It never occured to me that Hawaiian shirts and naughty comments were an exclusively male commodity.

You might think that my failure to meet the Woman’s Home Journal’s code of ethics has in some way warped my social life. Not at all. I think it’s quite possible to enjoy the frilly, flowery, gentle aspects of being a woman and still be able to hold your own in any barroom brawl.

What it comes down to, I guess, is simply that the line dividing men and women is not at all straight or well-defined, and when people try to tell me that women are supposed to know how to bake cookies and act offended over nudie playing cards … I get this instinctual urge to call up Dad and talk turbo engines.

There’s also this thing known as reverse sexism—and I know for a fact there are men out there much more genteel than many women. Anyway, fair is fair and I guess I have to respect Peggy’s opinions too. But if you’ll excuse me now, I believe my friends have a keg reserved in my name that I must attend to.