June 01, 2008
Sunday

Ketchikan, Alaska - Men and Women are different.

They must be, otherwise all those articles in the magazines my wife reads would be really, really, really wrong, or at least really, really, really pointless.

Page after page, article after article seem primarily intent in unlocking the male psyche for all of their - assumably - female readers.

I particularly like the ones that tell the readers what their male partner is really thinking.

It seems to be a really popular topic of discussion amongst women.

I.E. "What does he really mean when he says _______?"

Or "How his facial expressions give his deepest thoughts away."

Or "Uncoding his secret body language."

So even when someone of the female persuasion asks you what you are thinking and you honestly answer "nothing" it is clearly not a good enough answer. You must be thinking something and these articles will spell it all out

Uh huh.

The sad truth is that most men are usually conserving brain cells when they are quiet.

To tell you the truth, and not charge you $4.95 for it, most men are also conserving brain cells when they are talking as well.

Assuming that we are thinking about anything at all any given time is probably a waste of time. Nearly as a big a waste as reading all those articles written to give you a clue about what we are thinking.

And those times when we are thinking, you really don't want to know what we are thinking about anyway. Nothing good can come from that information.

Do you really want to know that we are pondering why our favorite sports team is not doing better?

Do you really want to know that we are considering which is more important between "less filling" or "tastes great?"

Do you really want to know that we are having a sudden nostalgic thought about a girl we kissed in the third grade?

Really the best advice I can give you is "don't ask, don't tell."

Oddly enough, the articles don't take that tact. They would rather offer up a zillion suggestions on how to unlock the deep pyche of maledom.

All I can say to that is "be careful what you wish for."

For example, when my son was only a few months old, my wife wished he would talk so she would know what he was thinking.

Now that he is seven, we always know what he is thinking!

Anyway, as I have said before I like to be a helpful sort of guy.

So in order to help bridge the misunderstanding gap I decided to join my wife for a little quality shared television viewing time. It was a program that was (is) called "American Idle."

Perfect, I thought. For once a program that I can unreservedly get behind.

I am one of the most "Idle Americans" that I know. If you ask me what I would prefer to be doing, the answer is the same one I will give if someone asks me "what I am thinking."

Nothing. Zippo. Nadda Grande!

I'm not kidding. Frequently, as a politician, I am asked what my position is on a specific subject.

No flip-flopping necessary.

My favorite and most consistent position is "prone."

So any show about being a lazy sloth gets two big thumbs up from me (assuming I want to even go to the effort of actually raising my thumbs).

I was actually thinking it might be like one of those old Second City TV show skits in which one of the characters is pretending to be Perry Como (a decidedly un-energetic performer) by portraying him laying "prone" on a couch and falling asleep in mid warble.

Silly me.

It was all about huffing and puffing and singing and dancing and generally cavorting around the stage like the energizer bunny

"They aren't very idle," I said, a little peeved.

"It's not idle," my wife replied, a more peeved. "It's idol. You know, like something you look up to?"

"I look up to any one who can be consistently idle," I replied.

Oddly enough, I didn't need a magazine article to help me figure out what she was thinking at that moment.

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Ketchikan, Alaska