WE’RE ALL A LITTLE LOONEY SOMETIMES

With the success of books explaining how your average man and woman are from different planets (or act like they are), it’s the perfect time to share my theories on how men and women differ.

I realize that I am not a recognized expert on much of anything - the only thing I have a PhD in is organizing my family – unfortunately the PhD stands for Perfectly Hopeless Disaster!  Still, I am confident that my years of research (24 years married and 4 children equally divided between both genders - the children, not the marriage) have given me all the facts I require to offer my unsolicited opinion. 

There are the obvious differences.  Take the physical manifestations of each gender.  Women are more delicate and refined - like they believe it is actually possible to get children and pets to respond WITHOUT bellowing their request loud enough to cause shingles to pop off the roof. (I once had a neighbor run over and return a rake when he heard my better half sending the kids out to put away the yard tools!  Come to think of it I’d been looking all over for that thing.)

 Another area in which men and women approach things from different angles is the concept of getting ready to go out.  Here explodes that great urban myth that a woman is always making a man wait for her. In my experience it is true that women tend to be the last ones ready for anything, but not due to their neurotic need to be controlling.  No, it is more likely due to the universal tendency of a man to consider ‘everything’ ready to go just because HE is ready to go.  Getting the family to go out, for example.  A man will go in and comb his hair, maybe brush his teeth, shave if need be.  Then he will slip on a shirt and pants, walk out to the kitchen pour himself a cup of coffee and sit down to read the paper.  Bingo, ready to go.  A woman will be making the bed, getting dressed, feeding the baby, combing everybody’s hair (except her own), sending kids back to change into acceptable outfits, changing diapers, digging through the toy box for her purse, solving a pimple crisis, locating matching shoes, hurrying everybody up and generally trying not to lose it.  Five minutes before time to leave, HE saunters out to the entry way and puts on his shoes and bellows at the kids to get in the car.  She sees an opening and runs to the bathroom to try and slap a little life onto her face with the help of cosmetics.  He goes out and sits in the car with the kids.  She comes hopping out on one foot trying to get her other shoe and right earring on at the same time.  Winded, she flops into the car and glares at him, and he says, “We weren’t trying to rush you or anything.”  No wonder women don’t age as well as men.

They also differ greatly in their thought processes.  A woman’s mind is constantly in high gear.  Usually she is thinking about half a dozen different and pressing issues.  Everything from the upcoming PTA bake sale to the national deficit to the possibility that little Billy may need braces.  On the other hand, at any given time there is only one thing going through a man’s head - the Looney-Toons theme. 

Give a man a task and he attacks it with a single-minded intensity, as soon as it’s done, that’s it, until another task comes up.  Most women have the habit of watching T.V., while folding laundry, helping junior with his homework, and talking on the telephone.  Most men can read the paper and drink a cup of coffee at the same time - providing they don’t have to get up for a refill, in which case they will forget where they left their cup.  Then they will forget where they were going.  And, finally, they will forget what it was they got up for.

There are other things.  Like the way a man will insist on putting every canned good you buy at the market into a single bag.  Or insist that you move the car seat back every time you get out of the car, even though it takes three people and twenty minutes for you to move it back up - when he only drives it on weekends, while you live in it.  Or how they believe deep in their hearts that a television remote belongs to them and them alone.

The really interesting thing about all of these differences though is that in spite of the feeling that you are slowly being driven insane, it seems that it’s all of these differences that cause us to seek each other out.  They give us balance, expand our experiences and draw us out of ourselves.  Besides, how else would I get all of the lawn tools back from the neighbors?