These "snowflake" conservatives would've had it hard in my stomping grounds

[misanthrope]

We played the dozens. It was fun, often hilarious and tested your creativity. Most of all, it grew thick skin.

For those who don't know, "the dozens" is the typical game of throwing insults at your pals, the more hardcore and harsh, the better. The only rule was it had to be funny. If you went to bare-faced intensity and threats then you lost.

After the first few years of white flight from our Birmingham neighborhood on the industrial town's working class west side, I became the only white kid on our blocks. It didn't matter but it gave me insight as to an underlying purpose of the dozens. It taught African-Americans how to cope with the daily indignities they would encounter throughout life in the American South. If they bristled or let those slights spark them to voice discontent or to action then they could pay for it direly or even fatally.

After we moved to other portions of town, I found the dozens there too but more as a rite of passage and cheap entertainment. If you lost your temper, you lost respect. The friends I gained through the years, high school, college and onward had similar outlooks.

Across the decades and into my 50s, I still have one old friend with the proper temperament to occasionally indulge in the diversion from time to time. We know it's in jest and the challenge is to our imaginations. There's no offense taken.

So when I see the offense taken at Wolf's WHCD remarks -- relatively kind remarks compared to the things I've said and received over the years -- I have little choice but to roll my eyes. Whining over a crack about lying and eye shadow? These punks wouldn't have made it five minutes in my 'hood.

[jberryhill]

1. Let's play the dozens...

...the dozens is a game,
but the way I ****d your ****,
is a ***** shame.

[Eliot Rosewater]

2. George had a way with words.

As in fuck you and the horse you rode in on, the dirt on your floor. And fuck everybody who looks like you.

Not you, but you know

[misanthrope]

3. Your mom serviced Rush Limbaugh

while wearing a Zac Efron mask. She dropped her price to a half-eaten Tic Tac.

[jberryhill]

4. Only because your mom ate the other half

[panader0]

5. I worked as a bricklayer most of my life.

We didn't call it the dozens, but the constant exchange of insults as we worked
was de rigueur. I learned early on that the guys only did this with guys they liked.
It could get extreme, which only made everyone laugh harder.
"There will be no boundaries!"

[bobbieinok]

6. First heard about 'doing the dozens' in a folklore/anthro text. Maybe by Alan Dundes.

[GeoWilliam750]

7. Isn't it interesting, though?

In most places I have worked, and with most men friends I have had in my life, men do this to each other constantly, and one only does this with one's friends and the men one trusts. As the saying goes, "If you call me a 'son of a bitch', you had better be smiling." Not being in on the give and take means you are an outsider, and indeed, typically the ruder, the better.

However, this is a bonding process in which women do not engage well, and men hurling even mild insults - even in good fun - at women in the workplace will very quickly result in disciplinary action.

[misanthrope]

8. Highly intriguing, yes

I wonder how much it is related to archetypes of masculine toughness, of "being able to take it."