This Concept Called ‘Bro’. No.

 

This ditty comes sideways from a post I’ll be putting up tomorrow (or Tuesday), and is merely a little bug bear which has been building up over time, and given my next post will annoy a lot of people, I may as well go for broke beforehand. I have never called anyone on the Internet, or whom I’ve met the once in the pub, or wherever, ‘bro’. And I am distinctly uncomfortable being called that.

 

Call it my anal (as in religiosity, though atheist now), prudish, keep an arm’s length away from my personal space and face please, up-bringing, but to be either a bro(er) or bro(ee) then in my book we would had to have, over at least the last thirty years, debated every topic under the sun and fallen out over at least four of them,  responsibly and perhaps irresponsibly drunk a reasonable amount of alcohol together, (over a certain era) smoked a bit/lot of weed together, been to each other’s wedding (singular in my case, but perhaps many for yourself), been there through each other’s triumphs, and pain, and  … you get the point.

 

It’s not a biggie, in the scheme of things, and there is of course a certain healthy symbolism in a bro(ership) especially if it spans some type of divide, and for many I ‘get it’ that it is just an idiom of speech, I’m not getting at anyone in anyway in this post, but, it just doesn’t quite sit right, that’s all. Sit right, that is, with me.

 

Um, that’s all. Though for the record, I have only a single male bro, though I’ve never called him such. And Mrs H became one by default on 21 March, 1991.