Men vs. women

I was thinking this morning (a rare occurrence) about some of the ways men and women are different.

Of course, women are crazy – and I say that with affection - but I mean other than that. There is a great divide between the behavior of the genders.

The difference came up the other night, when I was at the grocery store with my wife and daughter, and I was pushing the shopping cart out to the car, when I did what any man would do – I jumped up on it and rode it part of the way across the parking lot, pretending I was Richard Petty, hopping off just before we reached our car.

My daughter was predictably embarrassed at this childish behavior, but my wife assured her that it was normal, and that my son does it too. It’s in our genes, like the urge to scratch inappropriate places in public settings. It’s what we do. It’s how we roll.

There are quite a few things men do that you never see women do. For example, you never see a woman walk into a room, then jump as high as she can and try to touch the ceiling. But most males do this, or at least we do until when we’re about 40, when such an activity would make our hamstrings pop like rubber bands stretched too tight.

We don’t just throw away used paper towels or crumpled up pieces of paper; we pretend the garbage can is a basketball goal, and we shoot. Sometimes we’ll do a hook shot, or a fadeaway jumper, or if nobody is looking, a vicious 360 dunk.

We pick up any long, slender object nearby (umbrella, yard stick) and we swing it like a golf club or a baseball bat, or, if you were one of those weird Dungeons and Dragon kids, pretend it’s a sword. This impulse never goes away.

I have never seen a woman kick a rock down the sidewalk as she walked, trying to keep it going for as long as she can, and pretending in her head that if she can get past three more driveways, she will have set a new world record.

I’ve never seen a woman try to catch pennies off of her elbow. I will still occasionally bend my arm back, stack up some pennies and then try to snag them without letting any hit the floor. My friends and I used to practice this all the time. My personal record is 37.

You very seldom see a woman play air guitar, and that’s good, because quite frankly, they don’t do it very well. But if you take any man of a certain age and crank out the opening to “Whole Lotta Love” or “Sweet Child O’Mine,” he will almost instantly drop his right hand to his side and pretend to hit the strings with his imaginary pick. Depending on the situation, he may soon start doing windmills, making funny faces and sliding across the floor on his knees.

A man cannot stand and simply hold a basketball or soccer ball or tennis ball. He must instinctively bounce it, and will do so until a woman screams in anguish for him to stop. They have these super-bouncy balls in Dick’s Sporting Goods, and when I was in there with my son recently he picked one up and bounced it, and it almost reached the ceiling. Of course, I got on to him and told him to stop, but inside I was thinking, “Dude. That is so cool.”

This is just a small list of some of the fun women are missing out on in life. They don’t make paper footballs or throw spitballs or thump each other on the ear or all sorts of other fun things, but I think they should give it a try. Might make them not so crazy.