This
isn’t the first time I’ve tackled the differences between men and women as the
subject for a humor column. It’s always tricky, because no one rule or size
fits all.
I
once received a letter from an angry woman reader in response to a column I’d
written about fishing. I’d gone on about how only a man would spend untold
fortunes on the latest in scientific fish-finders, baits, lures and pontoons
(no self-respecting North Country fisherman could claim the title of expert
angler without a pontoon), only to spend an entire day in said inflatable boat
batting away mosquitoes, drinking his lunch, and not caring, really, if he
caught a fish.
Catching
a fish, to a man, is not the point of fishing. This does not make sense to a
woman, especially when she can’t park her car in the garage because of his
pontoon.
And,
to me, “jigging for crappies” or “twitching a Swedish pimple” just felt
inherently masculine. Fishing guy stuff.
Despite
all of man’s savvy and high-tech goodies that he’ll use to catch the big one,
he often won’t. Then, along comes a woman who’ll reel in a whale with a
doughball and a bent hair pin in two minutes, then ask “Is this a good one?”
Ack!
My
lady reader took great exception to this, lambasting me for suggesting that
women can’t, won’t or don’t know how to fish. I never posited this; I was only
trying to say that somewhere beyond our anatomical differences, out where the
crappie meets the jig and the pimple twitches, men and women are not the same.
Show
me any woman, for instance, who would ever see the logic of showering with your
clothes on. I tried to defend this practice once to a female when I lived alone
in a third-floor walkup with no washer & drier. Lather up, wash the
clothes, rinse, undress, lather, rinse, repeat, towel-off and hang the wet
stuff on the shower rod.
Laundry
done. Body bathed. All in one chore.
Simple.
“That’s
crazy,” she said, and not long afterward she stopped taking my phone calls.
I’ve
lived alone since last year when my dear wife Judy passed on, and I’m here to
defend a few tips (already preparing for my reader mail) on how to best
accomplish living alone as a man.
The
“performance” level of any task radically changed when I found myself only
having to do for myself. I now prop up and repair broken things with a
different sense of aesthetics and funky functions. Okay, I do have a washer and
drier and I have since taken a shower or two in my skivvies, but that was due
to sleep deprivation, not logic.
In
the kitchen, Judy was a gourmet cook, and I’ve been left to fend for my food
and cooking alone. I’ve slowly adapted, but let’s just say I lack culinary
finesse for some things. I never knew, for example, that an egg cooked in a
microwave would cause it to explode when you stick it with a fork, but I also
learned that a wire brush duct-taped to the blunt end of a broomstick will get
dried egg off the ceiling.
Food
shopping for one is a whole new adventure. If I don’t bring home enough, I need
a slide rule to reconfigure recipes. Too much, and the leftover casseroles turn
into fuzzy green science projects. Rotating tires works, but rotating moldy
macaroni doesn’t.
I
do find that I talk to myself out loud occasionally, and will often agree with
me after listening closely. Sometimes I take exception to my side of the story,
but I’ve learned that I can be easily persuaded. I don’t suggest doing this in public, but it will thin out the
line at the post office as people make way for you and yourself.
For
some reason, with half the humanity here, I also thought there’d be less need
for cleaning & vacuuming in the house.
Another myth debunked, but I’m not worried. If it weren’t for dust
bunnies, I’d have no pets at all.
Except
for maybe a big fish story or two.
Man
alive.
*
* * * *
Senior Wire News Service syndicated humor columnist B.
Elwin Sherman writes from Bethlehem, NH. Copyright 2013 by B. Elwin Sherman.
All rights reserved. Used here with permission.
No comments:
Post a Comment