Coming to Terms with the Y Chromosome
So here's the thing about men: the thing is, all men are airheads.
And I'm not trying to pick a fight or necessarily make a sweeping generalization, it's just a conclusion I've come to after years and years of empirical study. My husband is an airhead, all of his male friends are airheads, all of my friends' husbands and boyfriends are airheads. I've never met an exception.
Granted, everyone has their moments of airheadedness, of misplacing wallets and getting lost and mistaking the salt for the sugar. But the airhead gene that is carried on the Y chromosome is far more pronounced and ferocious than the airhead gene carried on the X chromosome. Women may misplace keys, but a man will walk around the house for twenty fucking minutes looking for his keys only to realize that he's had them in his hand the whole time.
And I'm not saying that being an airhead is such a bad thing, it's just something I've had to learn to deal with. I've had to learn that men will most likely lose track of time while they are sitting on the toilet, and when I say lose track of time I mean that they will not realize that they have been reading Macworld for over 90 minutes while sitting bare-bottomed on a cold porcelain pot. My husband often wonders why he has a permanent red indentation around his upper thighs.
Men will forget that the dog is a living, breathing being, and when you point out that the dog has had an empty water bowl for over 12 hours a man will say, "But he had a drink this morning, I don't see the problem." When you ask if he's fed the dog he'll say, "He ate yesterday. You mean he has to eat everyday?"
Men will put in their contact lenses, forget they have put in their contact lenses, put on their glasses and wonder why everything is so blurry.
A man will fill the teapot to the brim with water, turn on the stove and walk away. 5 minutes later in the middle of a riveting article on G4 upgrade cards and their relative installation times, he'll wonder from the safety of the commode what the hell that screaming, hissing noise is and why the dog is howling. 10 minutes later, after the hissing has turned into sizzling and the fire alarm has sounded, he'll muse to himself, "I really like the PowerForce G4 Series 100 1GHz, I wonder how fast they could ship it?"
And just when I think I've learned everything, when I think the airheadedness had reached it's most ridiculous form, my husband will walk up to me, look at me with those lovely hazel eyes through his trendy Isaac Mizrahi glasses and ask with pained seriousness, "Have you see my glasses?"
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FM Living
Dave said:
Guilty as charged.
02.27.03 - 11:01 AM / 1Amanda Lew said:
Amen, sister. A-fucking-men.
02.27.03 - 11:06 AM / 2the husband said:
We also have a kind of selective amnesia.
02.27.03 - 11:06 AM / 3helenjane said:
oh sweet baby jesus, that sounds like me...
am i a man?
02.27.03 - 11:08 AM / 4Faybert said:
I am positive anyone that has worn glasses since they were old enough to read has looked for their glasses while they were on their face. But only the true airheads walk around for anything more than .3 seconds looking for the keys in their hand.
The toilet thing, yeah, I think we have all lost track of time, but 90 minutes is just plain out of control, you need to curb that =p.
02.27.03 - 11:09 AM / 5Chip Tijuana said:
I think being an airhead combined with the selective amnesia is what keeps us sane. There's no figuring women, so why bother, and while we're at it, why bother figuring anything out. It's easier to live in a bubble of ignorant bliss.
02.27.03 - 11:11 AM / 6Marie said:
My personal favorite is their comple inability to find anything in the fucking kitchen; not in the fridge, pantry or cabinets. And you tell them, "it's on the 3rd shelf, sorta to the left" (mentally visualizing EXACTLY where it is)--they whine that they can't find it, so you get up and promply find whatever-it-is, exactly where you said it would be!!!!!!!! ugghhhh
02.27.03 - 11:11 AM / 7jenb said:
My husband once called his mom (while he was still single) 4000 KM away to see if she might have an idea of where his wallet was. 4000 KM away.
02.27.03 - 11:12 AM / 8Evan said:
The husband has a point. The selective amnesia thing is definitely a biological mechanism developed by males in order to compensate for the.....uhhh....I'm sorry, what was I saying?
02.27.03 - 11:17 AM / 9brunette_with_class said:
I call the problem "man syndrome". This is when a man is staring at something RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACE, (usually tends to be something in the fridge they can't find) and yell "Hunny, where is the _______"?!?!?
Right in front of your face dumbass! lmao
02.27.03 - 11:18 AM / 10Beerzie Boy said:
You forgot NOT LISTENING! That's the whole thing; we NEVER LISTEN!
Now what was it you were saying?
02.27.03 - 11:23 AM / 11David said:
You've just reminded me, I've left the kettle on...
02.27.03 - 11:29 AM / 12mbc said:
the porcelain is only cold for the first 30 seconds.
02.27.03 - 11:30 AM / 13Lively Lady said:
Amen to that. However, the Y chromosome has another weakness as well: the "I shoulda" syndrome. I have sworn to have this engraved on hubbies' tombstone.
02.27.03 - 11:30 AM / 14Alex said:
Classic y-chromosome moment:
A few years back, a bad snowstorm made it almost impossible to find a parking space. There was a pseudo spot not too far from our apartment ñ I say pseudo, because really only a Yugo or Mini-Cooper would have fit.
"Here's a spot" the husband says.
"You won't fit" I say.
"Yes I will" he says.
"You'll get stuck."
"No I won't."
After about 5 minutes backing up, pulling out, backing up, pulling out, the wheels of our car begin spinning, we stop moving and he says incredulously, "Hey, we got stuck!"
02.27.03 - 11:31 AM / 15abby said:
my boyfriend conveniently can't find ANYTHING when i send him to the grocery store. Soup? "They didn't have it." "Did you look in the canned aisle?" "Uhhh...." Mushrooms? "They didn't have them." "Did you look in the produce section?" "......................No."
All of which leads me to suspect that the airheadedness is just a calculated method of getting us to do all the work.
Think about it, ladies.
02.27.03 - 11:36 AM / 16Heather #2 said:
My husband was completely opposite. HE would remind ME of things I did during my childhood, where I left my shoes, or the three things I forgot to do. One time we spent twenty minutes looking for my keys, which were normally in the side pocket of my purse. So then he found them - in the side pocket of my purse.
My Y chromosome problem had to due with libido, fucking ass. He just couldn't keep "it" in his pants. Which I never understood because IT WAS TINY!
02.27.03 - 11:41 AM / 17Heather #2 said:
Um....yeah. "Due". Right.
02.27.03 - 11:42 AM / 18Filter said:
Step 1 is identifying the problem.
Step 2 is using it to your advantage.
I can be as dumb (airheaded) as a fox when I can gain an advantage from it.
02.27.03 - 11:43 AM / 19mark said:
I am forever forgeting where i left my glass. There are half-full glasses of water all over my apartment because I forget where I left them and immediately pour another one.
and I bought black glasses so I could find them more easily.
02.27.03 - 11:43 AM / 20Anne said:
My boyfriend has chronic "my - imaginary - directions - are - better - than - those - printed - on - the - box." Last night, for example, the brownies called for one egg, 1/3 water, 1/3 oil. Well, we ended up with 2/3 water (he couldn't decide between olive or vegetable, so we went without), 2 eggs, and twice the temperature to halve the baking time.
When I asked if he followed the directions, he looked at me like I was crazy for even suggesting that he wouldn't.
02.27.03 - 11:46 AM / 21drew said:
i hate it when my legs fall asleep because my elbows cut off the blood to them while i'm reading.
02.27.03 - 11:46 AM / 22zchamu said:
WORD.
Don't forget lacking the ability to comprehend where anything goes in their house they have lived in for ages. "Where does the frying pan go?" In the cupboard, with ALL THE OTHER frying pans, where they went LAST WEEK when you asked me the same question, where they have ALWAYS gone.
It's an amazing thing.
02.27.03 - 11:49 AM / 23* Jen * said:
They also forget how to fold laundry,empty the dishwasher, close drawers and cabinets, throw away empty booze bottles, rinse their stubble out of the sink and....oh jesus. It's useless.
And by the way, I am SO BUMMED that Mr. Rogers died.
02.27.03 - 11:53 AM / 24Wayne said:
goodbye, dooce...
02.27.03 - 12:05 PM / 25hartwell said:
I am printing this post right now and bringing it home for my XY to read.
Just yesterday, I emailed him twice and called him once to remind him to bring something very important home from work. When he walked in the door at 6pm, he said "You're going to kill me." And to think that I placed the reminder call at 5:15pm - only 45 minutes earlier. 45 minutes!!
02.27.03 - 12:05 PM / 26da said:
it's not that we are airheads, we just have something else on our minds. (britany's breasts usually)
02.27.03 - 12:07 PM / 27Carrie said:
Everything you just said - and more! My lovely, sweet b/f just moved, and when he opened his old microwave in front of me and murmured that he ought to clean it, he followed up that thought by admitting to me that he didn't know what to clean it with. He's had this thing for at least 5 years - do the math with me.
Although I have to admit that whenever I wear contacts, I still have a nervous habit of pushing up my glasses - which aren't really there - so I end up poking myself in the bridge of the nose for no apparent reason. So, we do weird things, too. LOTS of them.
02.27.03 - 12:14 PM / 28Zan said:
Where the heck ARE my keys anyway?
02.27.03 - 12:20 PM / 29chizantski said:
I'm not only airheaded w/selective amnesia, to top it all off, i have tunnel vision, when it comes to people getting my attention. It's as if my brain has two mechanisms. one to sense that my attention is needed and the other to trigger my response. I think i'm missing the second and very crucial mechanism. If i am concentrating on something (computer, most of the time) and someone wants my attention, they often stammer and get pissed, and just as they are about to turn away my response mechanism turns on, and makes the situation worse. I swear to all my future girlfriends, wives and ex-wives that i am not doing this on purpose.
i'm not sure if this is a guy thing, although I definitely inherited it from my father. any other guys have smiliar lapses? my dating career has been paltry and anemic because of this social-life threathening illness.
02.27.03 - 12:23 PM / 30