Men vs. Women

There is simply no point in trying to compare men and women. Although they both belong to the species homo sapiens, the similarity ends right there.They don’t look, smell or feel the same, and they certainly don’t think alike.

A woman’s mind, like Gaul, is divided into three parts. A jaded man might maintain that this is why she always interrupts him in the middle of a dissertation on the Far East to ask if he remembered to take out the garbage. But a closer look at the facts will set the record straight.

The trouble with men is that they can think of only one thing at a time, which wreaks havoc with normal, everyday routine.You can’t expect a man who’s worrying about the latest stock market quotations to remember to put snow tires on the car. His thoughts take all his concerted effort. So unless you want to remain house bound till spring, you’ll pile every child you have (and you’d be amazed at the number of children you seem to own when you try to cram them all into leggings and boots) and do the job yourself.

A woman, on the other hand, like a three-ring circus, is built to operate on several cylinders at once. As a matter of fact, my uncanny ability to stop whatever I’m doing just in time to prevent domestic disaster has earned me an enviable reputation among my children. I was driving with my five-year-old in the back seat, when she asked me to look at the book she was reading. When I told her I couldn’t because I had to watch the road, she said, “It’s all right, Mum. I know you have eyes in the back of your head.”

No matter what I’m doing, I always have a five-year-old underfoot. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed this or not, but five-year-olds always ask questions demanding answers for which they can have no possible use. Now, it’s all very well to say that one must nourish a child’s inquiring mind, but I defy anyone but a woman to work out a baby formula with the ratio of 17 ½ oz. of water to 13 ½ oz. of condensed milk pr 8 oz. bottle, and explain the difference between a lady and a gentleman snake at the same time.

The fact is that women can deal with a variety and coincidence of crises that would make most masculine minds boggle. Unfortunately, the rest of him boggles too, so that rather than sit and watch you struggle to dress a child who seems to have grown an extra pair of arms and legs in the last five minutes, he’ll gallantly say, “I’ll just get out of your way, dear,” and trot himself off to the nearest bowling alley for a week.

Every woman has her own recipe for handling emergencies. I can’t speak for others, but down through the years, I’ve evolved a few basic precepts:

If it’s dripping, wipe it. If it’s bleeding, bandage it. If it’s anything else, it can wait until you take two aspirins and put your feet up for an hour.

We women are just too darned versatile for our own good. We’re going to have to develop a good old-fashioned one-track mind like our husbands and let the house and children fall where they may.