Heaven.
Other results of the guy need to have stuff are Star Wars, the recreational boating industry, monorails, nuclear weapons, and wristwatches that indicate the phase of the moon. I am not saying that women have not been involved in the development or use of this stuff. I’m saying that, without guys, this stuff probably would not exist; just as, without women, virtually every piece of furniture in the world would still be in its original position. Guys do not have a basic need to rearrange furniture. Whereas my wife, Beth, who happens to be a woman and who, as noted, would cheerfully use the same computer for fifty-three years, rearranges our furniture on almost a weekly basis, sometimes in the dead of night. She’ll be sound asleep in bed, and suddenly, at 2 a.m., she’ll be awakened by the urgent thought:
The blue-green sofa needs to go perpendicular to the wall instead of parallel, and it needs to go there RIGHT NOW
. So she’ll get up and move it, which of course necessitates moving other furniture, and soon she has rearranged our entire living room, shifting great big heavy pieces that ordinarily would require several burly men to lift, because there are few forces in Nature more powerful than a woman who needs to rearrange furniture. It would not surprise me to wake up one morning and find that we lived in an entirely different house.
(I realize that I’m making gender-based generalizations here, but my feeling is that if God did not want us to make gender-based generalizations, She would not have given us genders.)
GUYS LIKE A REALLY POINTLESS CHALLENGE.
Not long ago I was sitting in my office at the
Miami Herald’s
Sunday magazine,
Tropic
, reading my fan mail 4 ,when I heard several of my guy co-workers in the hallway talking about how fast they could run the forty-yard dash. These are guys in their thirties and forties who work in journalism, where the most demanding physical requirement is the ability to digest vending-machine food. In other words, these guys have absolutely no need to run the forty-yard dash.
But one of them, Mike Wilson, was writing a story about a star high-school football player who could run it in 4.38 seconds. Now if Mike had written a story about, say, a star high-school poet, none of my guy co-workers would have suddenly decided to find out how well they could write sonnets. But when Mike turned in his story, they became
deeply
concerned about how fast they could run the forty-yard dash. They were so concerned that the magazine’s editor, Tom Shroder, decided that they should get a stopwatch and go out to a nearby park and find out. Which they did, a bunch of guys taking off their shoes and running around barefoot in a public park on company time.
This is what I heard them talking about, out in the hall. I heard Tom, who was thirty-eight years old, saying that his time in the forty had been 5.75 seconds. And I thought to myself: “This is ridiculous. These are middle-aged guys, supposedly adults, and they’re out there
bragging
about their performance in this stupid, juvenile footrace.” Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Hey!” I shouted. “
I
could beat 5.75 seconds.”
So we went out to the park and measured off forty yards, and the guys told me that I had three chances to make my best time. On the first try my time was 5.78 seconds, just three-hundredths of a second slower than Tom’s, even though, at forty-five, I was seven years older than he. So I just
knew
I’d beat him on the second attempt if I ran really, really hard, which I did for a solid ten yards, at which point my left hamstring muscle, which had not yet shifted into Sprint Mode from Mail-Reading Mode, went, and I quote, “pop.”
I had to be helped off the field. I was in considerable pain, and I was obviously not going to be able to walk right for weeks. I felt pretty stupid. Fortunately, Beth was sympathetic.
“You
idiot
“ she sympathized. “What on earth did you
think
was going to
Other results of the guy need to have stuff are Star Wars, the recreational boating industry, monorails, nuclear weapons, and wristwatches that indicate the phase of the moon. I am not saying that women have not been involved in the development or use of this stuff. I’m saying that, without guys, this stuff probably would not exist; just as, without women, virtually every piece of furniture in the world would still be in its original position. Guys do not have a basic need to rearrange furniture. Whereas my wife, Beth, who happens to be a woman and who, as noted, would cheerfully use the same computer for fifty-three years, rearranges our furniture on almost a weekly basis, sometimes in the dead of night. She’ll be sound asleep in bed, and suddenly, at 2 a.m., she’ll be awakened by the urgent thought:
The blue-green sofa needs to go perpendicular to the wall instead of parallel, and it needs to go there RIGHT NOW
. So she’ll get up and move it, which of course necessitates moving other furniture, and soon she has rearranged our entire living room, shifting great big heavy pieces that ordinarily would require several burly men to lift, because there are few forces in Nature more powerful than a woman who needs to rearrange furniture. It would not surprise me to wake up one morning and find that we lived in an entirely different house.
(I realize that I’m making gender-based generalizations here, but my feeling is that if God did not want us to make gender-based generalizations, She would not have given us genders.)
GUYS LIKE A REALLY POINTLESS CHALLENGE.
Not long ago I was sitting in my office at the
Miami Herald’s
Sunday magazine,
Tropic
, reading my fan mail 4 ,when I heard several of my guy co-workers in the hallway talking about how fast they could run the forty-yard dash. These are guys in their thirties and forties who work in journalism, where the most demanding physical requirement is the ability to digest vending-machine food. In other words, these guys have absolutely no need to run the forty-yard dash.
But one of them, Mike Wilson, was writing a story about a star high-school football player who could run it in 4.38 seconds. Now if Mike had written a story about, say, a star high-school poet, none of my guy co-workers would have suddenly decided to find out how well they could write sonnets. But when Mike turned in his story, they became
deeply
concerned about how fast they could run the forty-yard dash. They were so concerned that the magazine’s editor, Tom Shroder, decided that they should get a stopwatch and go out to a nearby park and find out. Which they did, a bunch of guys taking off their shoes and running around barefoot in a public park on company time.
This is what I heard them talking about, out in the hall. I heard Tom, who was thirty-eight years old, saying that his time in the forty had been 5.75 seconds. And I thought to myself: “This is ridiculous. These are middle-aged guys, supposedly adults, and they’re out there
bragging
about their performance in this stupid, juvenile footrace.” Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Hey!” I shouted. “
I
could beat 5.75 seconds.”
So we went out to the park and measured off forty yards, and the guys told me that I had three chances to make my best time. On the first try my time was 5.78 seconds, just three-hundredths of a second slower than Tom’s, even though, at forty-five, I was seven years older than he. So I just
knew
I’d beat him on the second attempt if I ran really, really hard, which I did for a solid ten yards, at which point my left hamstring muscle, which had not yet shifted into Sprint Mode from Mail-Reading Mode, went, and I quote, “pop.”
I had to be helped off the field. I was in considerable pain, and I was obviously not going to be able to walk right for weeks. I felt pretty stupid. Fortunately, Beth was sympathetic.
“You
idiot
“ she sympathized. “What on earth did you
think
was going to
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