DJDM/WENN.com

Being arguably the best basketball player of all time apparently means nothing when a country club wants you to follow their rules.

According to the NY Daily News, hall of famer Michael Jordan was banned from the La Gorce Country Club in Miami Beach after he refused to change out of his cargo shorts into “proper” golf pants or shorts.

Jordan, whose favorite pastime for years has been golfing, told ESPN Chicago that he was not about to interrupt his game over shorts:

“I’ve been there many times and no one told me a thing. Then all of a sudden they come to me on the 11th hole and say I can’t wear cargo shorts. Wow! The round is almost over and you want me to buy shorts now? Yeah, right!!”

“We were not aware that he is not allowed to return to La Gorce,” his representatives said. “I guess it’s their loss – as MJ is a great golfer, and a great guest.”

By now we are familiar with MTV2’s hit show “Guy Code.” The show focuses on men and their funniest, gross (paying for sex) rules, and questionable codes. While the secret’s out on some of guy codes, what about the ladies? I’m sure many women know the traditional girl codes like not dating a best friend’s ex, being honest with one another, and hiding those sneaky tracks , but while it may be hard to believe, there are many tidbits that most girls may not know about.

This isn’t the “best friends forever” list , or even an “how to” list. There are just some rules that women (like me) didn’t know about until it was too late.  So let’s put some old rules to bed and create some new codes.

Growing up I thought I knew everything there was to know about love, without ever remembering having been taught.

I didn’t want to accept that all men cheat. I didn’t want to have to almost take a bullet or put money in some guys’ commissary to know its love. I lived somewhere in between Bronx Tale and Poetic Justice and developed a love all on my own. But how can I know my love was healthy or true if no one ever taught me?

For a minute let us forget about the big L word and focus on the nuisances of love, what leads to love, the like process, the shacking up (if you choose to), how to make love, how to know that the love you’re making is good, etc. I was taught the ills, the pitfalls, the trickery that can come with love but as far as my momma was concerned, we didn’t need to talk about the good stuff or the many confusing things.

I don’t blame my mom, I love her dearly and in all honesty I don’t think she could’ve taught me because like myself I don’t believe she was ever taught, but why not? Most things in life I’ve learned; language, speech, applying makeup, mathematics but for some reason we think love and a like is a given.

A few months ago I decided to give my boyfriend a key to my place. This took months of scrutiny, though he was only getting the bottom lock; a conversation with my older sister had to happen, nights of anxiety transpired and still I felt uneasy about it. It wasn’t one of those, ‘my intuition is telling me something bad’ but more ‘how do I go about it?’ What does this mean for our relationship? And now that we’re practically living together –something I’ve never done before- how do I (semi) live with a man? Do I wake up with make-up on, a la Whitley on a Different world? Which bills does he pay? He’s offered to pay whichever bill I decide but which do I decide? Do I let him pay any bills at all? These may seem like questions someone younger than myself (flirty thirty) would be asking but I’ve never been in love like this before.

In a perfect world, before I ever met a fella and fell for him, my mom would have talked to me about a few things. We already know she would have covered, shiftlessness, shadiness and his falling short but would she have thrown in a few happy facts for the guy who made the cut? Here’s what I would hope my mother would go over:

1. He’s not always thinking about you- and that’s ok.

This funny thing happened with my man. He had a bad day, a few bad days and came home and made the blanket statement “everything in my life sucks right now.” I was blown, immediately I thought, “really, so my sheer presence isn’t enough to make you happy 24/7?” Yes and no. Yes, you represent happiness in his life but a man is going to have a bad day or few and you can’t fix it and more importantly, it’s NOT about you.

You’ll have to forgive me. As a young lady in her early 20s who has spent a lot of time focused on school and work over the years, I haven’t done a whole lot of dating. Sure, I’ve had a few boyfriends, a serious one or two, but most of those men were friends first. Therefore, there was no “Let’s exchange numbers, go on a few dates, play coy about who was going to call who when, and finally either get booed up or the boot.” The rules and etiquette of the dating game have gone over my head for a good minute, but now that I’m in NYC, it’s something I see that I need to learn thoroughly. So maybe that’s why I wanted your opinion on a certain scenario that happened to me not too long ago…

So, I met this very interesting and pretty good looking guy whose air of confidence and good vibrations was pretty infectious. His mother was Jamaican and his father was Nigerian (Nice mix, right?), and he was tall, dark and handsome. On top of that, he was into writing too, but actually spent a majority of his time as a theater actor in smaller productions. As a transplant to NYC, he reminded me of a starving (though he wasn’t) artist from the movies and TV who could bring dope conversation. And he did. After exchanging numbers, we could talk for hours on end about a little bit of everything. He was one of those “Hey Beautiful, how are you?” type of guys, instead of one of those “Hey” or “Whats gud” types (yes, the error was on purpose..I’ve seen it). I was excited about the prospect of getting to know him better, but I laid out from our very first conversation (let’s say it was a Monday) that my schedule was no joke. I work pretty hard and pretty long on this site, so when the day is through, I’m ready to be through too. Because of that, I asked if we could meet up on Saturday until I could decide whether or not he was worth making some exceptions for during the week (I didn’t tell him that last part of course). He said he understood and agreed, but the reality was, he really didn’t.

In fact, every day for a week this guy called me or text me at work and asked if we could meet up on that specific day: “Hey, I cooked some food, you want to stop by?” “I have a show tonight, do you want to come through and watch?” I don’t mind being spontaneous, but during that specific week, I was working late most of the days of the week. With earlier notice, I possibly could have budged, but because I didn’t know him well enough (and wasn’t comfortable being in his place yet) and because we’d already agreed on Saturday, I politely said thanks, “but I’m still at work.” That excuse was used on on top of the fact that borough hopping after work and being far away from my own home late in the evening also didn’t excite me. Long subway rides when you’re tired suck. But he didn’t get the memo. He kept texting me each day about how he really wanted to see me, and at one point, I felt that I was being pressured rather than being politely asked. I would just say, “Remember, we’re hanging out on Saturday, right? Do you mind if we just wait until then?” He would pretend like he was okay with that. That was of course until Saturday came.

After the last thanks-but-no-thanks, I got the feeling he was perturbed with me. Therefore, when Saturday came around and the hours started passing, I wasn’t surprised that I hadn’t heard anything from him. When I called him, there were no more “Hey Beautifuls” for me, just straight up irritation: “What’s up?”

Oh, okay, I see how it’s going to be I thought to myself…

When I asked him if we were still kicking it or if he had other plans, SURPRISE, he all of a sudden had something come up. A friend that he does theater with needed his help with a screenplay, and for some reason, it became a last minute emergency. I giggled when he told me about his new plan, you know, because it was bulls***,  and in a way that I knew we both would understand, I said, “Okay then, bye.” Bye as in, it was fun while it lasted. Kind of.

Now when I talked to my mother about the situation after-the-fact, she broke down that I probably came off too rigid for him. Because I wasn’t willing to eat pancakes at his house when he asked or stay out late when I had to get up at the crack of dawn for work, I was too stuck in my ways and wasn’t going to be much fun. For a minute there, I could understand what she meant. So for the next few suitors, I tried to make myself more available (although I would show up to dates exhausted…so tired that I would yawn nonstop). But then again, I thought to myself, “I asked him if Saturday was okay, and he agreed that it was!” Keyword: AGREED. As in, Saturday, was what we agreed upon together. However, when it wasn’t anymore (and he didn’t bother to just say that), he decided to try and pressure me every day to do what he wanted to do at the drop of a hat. When he couldn’t understand my reservations about doing so, or my schedule for that matter, he copped an attitude and was too through with my rigid a**. So now I’m trying to figure out if he was doing too much, or if I was doing too little? And oh yeah, us meeting, talking, and falling out, happened in the span of one week…

Should I have tried to be more flexible, or should he have stuck with our original plan?

In a few short years, there have been some major adjustments to the dating game. I can see the difference in the attitude of women in younger generations compared to mine. They have much more of a,  “I want him and I am going to get him” type of attitude. Back in the day, when you liked someone, you kind of played it off until he let on that he was he feeling the same way. But nowadays, women are much more aggressive, and it is clearly the era of the “go-getter.” My mother’s generation viewed women with this “go- getter” mentality with less than pleasant eyes, but today, the women who go for what they want are growing in numbers, and they’re getting respect and the guy for being so bold. Yep,  the times have changed and so has the dating game. Here are a few examples:

While recently watching the movie Something Borrowed starring Kate Hudson, I couldn’t help but to watch in awe as one friend secretly dated her best friend’s fiancé behind her back. While I get the writers’ point of attempting to make a romantic chick flick (and in their defense it was actually a cute movie), I immediately knew that the two writers of the movie weren’t aware, or didn’t care, about the girlfriend codes.

While one of my friends suggested that the characters in the film, and presumably the writers, lacked a bit of melanin to their skin that might possibly excuse them from understanding the codes, I was still shocked that any close friend, no matter what color or ethnic background, would find it acceptable to date a friend’s fiancé and automatically expect forgiveness from her hurt homie. Sure, you may have once had a thing for the guy, but that’s HER man!

The girlfriend codes, although unspoken, are those ultimate no-no’s and the most important musts that are required amongst girlfriends; and while each friendship has its own custom set of unspoken rules, most girls would agree on these six specific codes.

So many times my mom has been my news aggregate. Most of the time the stories center around parenting, being that she’s a mother and all. She was the first to tell me about the “white” baby born to Nigerian parents, the botox girl and now this.

Yesterday she sent me a text message asking if I’d heard about the parents who are allowing their children to have sex in their home. These parents came and spoke on Good Morning America, telling the nation that they’re cool with their kids screwing under their roof.

Read the rest of this entry »