You're not being very pleasant

After watching this video by my favourite author, John Green, I recently watched the 1950 film Harvey (that, admittedly, my father had been nagging me to watch for years. Sorry Dad). Unsurprisingly I did find it to be quite an important movie, as quirky as it may be. To me the point of the movie can be summed u by one quote that has suck with me. Elwood quotes his mother in saying, 
"In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant." 
This was important to me because I had spent to much of my time trying to be smart. I try to read all the right books, watch the right movies and listen to the right music. It was an exhausting part of my being that I felt the need to consume as much cultural knowledge as possible before my time was up, lest I grow old to be an uneducated proletarian.
While education and cultural knowledge are still important to me this movie brought me down into reality reminding me that knowledge was not all that was important in life. So for now I have chosen to be "oh so pleasant."

Herein lies the problem. Some people make it very difficult to be pleasant and finding myself sufficiently short of Gandhi's patients when words of cruelty are gushing out of the mouths around me. For me to respond in the words circling my mind would not me pleasant of me. Nor would it be pleasant for me to release my frustration to another by retailing the tail. I am forever attempting to better myself and I feel this is a necessary point for improvement. Can can one be pleasant when they cannot let annoyances pass over them like water off a ducks back? I will be sure to update when I have found a successful method to do so. At this point I would like to note that for my own personal purposes I have altered the statement to "kind" in place of "pleasant" as I feel that is a more desirable and more complete attribute that I would wish to have associated with my name. So, where is the line drawn? It is more kind to point out the ill-intentioned words and acts of others in a hope that it may advantage them, and others, in the future. Or is it more kind to simply keep ones mouth shut and choose not to participate?

Once again I end the week with many questions left unanswered. Perhaps as I gain life experience some of my questions will be answered. Here's, once again, to hoping.

Can we just be friends?

Lately one thing that has been making my blood boil is the notion that if a girl is nice to a guy she is "leading him on." Males seem to have some kind of evolutionary right to get angry at a girl if she asks him to hang out and genuinely means just hang out. Why do guys always think there is a hidden meaning?
A few weeks ago I invited one of my male friends to watch a movie with me after we'd been talking about it at dinner. It really was nothing more than "Oh man I love the Blair Witch Project, I really feel like watching it now. Want to watch it after dinner?" yet he somehow seems to have a given right to be mad at me because I wouldn't let anything more than that happen. I spent the whole movie guarding my hands because the moment I let my guard down he would without fail grab my hand, something that I was not at all comfortable with. As the movie was finishing and I was getting tired I exaggerated my sleepiness and pretended to be all but asleep in a hope that this would make him leave, as this particular friend has a track record of not taking subtle hints to leave and getting mad when I ask more bluntly for him to leave.
Eyes closed and leaning on the wall beside me I played the part and he asked if he should leave (in an obvious 'or I could stay the night' tone). I said "Yeah you probably should" or something to that effect and eventually he did.
The next day I was welcomed to the dining hall by his friends telling me how much of a 'dog' I was because I had invited him to watch a movie and actually meant it. When the story of the previous night was relayed to me I was now the villain who seductively asked him back to my room and then held his hand before teasingly pulling away throughout the night. What horrified me the most was that according to these friends of his, when he asked if he should leave I told him "that it was up to him" and he was the gentleman who left, not wanting to take advantage. Can I throw up now? This blatant lie makes me feel physically ill. To have his friends telling me that he was the good guy because he left even after I'd spent the night seducing and teasing him. I can honestly say that it was one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life and I could not wait to have him out of my room.
When I asked my other males friends what they thought of his interpretation of the night they too put the blame solely on me. One of my friends remarked "So you asked him to "watch a movie" and then you chose a horror movie? What are you doing to the poor guy, Laura?" What infuriated me about his statement was the air quotes around "watch a movie." Call me old fashioned but when did "watch a movie" stop meaning actually watching a movie? And what am I meant to say if I actually want to watch a movie with a friend? Or am I just not allowed to watch a movie with male friends at all anymore?
I am probably either extremely old fashioned or naive, but this is something I continually see happening. Guys getting mad at girls because they have been "lead on" even when the girl has made it clear that she isn't up for anything more than friendship (as I had in my case). Guys, take it from me. Most girls aren't into playing games like that, if they say they're involved with someone else, or they just want to be friends they probably mean it and any further attention is unwanted and will make them extremely uncomfortable. There is a small percentage of girls who I'm sure do play these games (I don't actually know any, but I'm not going to rule out their existence) but these are not the girls you want anyway and you should not be encouraging that behavior.

I'll take my friend Ethan as hope that girls and guys can be uncomplicated friends.