By Kerri Havnen Gordon

The Living Experiment

“Oh, look at that tiny lizard,” I said to my husband “Isn’t it cute’? It can’t be more than 2 inches long.”

When we stopped on the trail to admire it, I stood quietly so as not to scare it off. My husband, on the other hand,, crept toward the lizard, both hands cupped and poised to grab it. Smart little liz that it scampered into the brush before my husband could hoist it, King Kong style, high above its lizard world.

This, I believe, illustrates the essential difference between men and women.

Women are content to merely look at reptiles, while men are compelled to catch them. I think this is very strange. I only pick up lizards when our cat deposits them on our dining room floor. Lizards are interesting, I’ll admit, and they are less problematic than toads, which have a tendency to urinate when alarmed. My guys like picking up toads, too. Go figure.

Over the years I have discovered several other critical truths about the male gender. My highly statistical analysis stems from a sampling of precisely three males-my husband and two increasingly large sons.

First, men like to build things. At this writing we have in our house seven rockets, six radio-control airplanes, three computers and even a high-end mountain bike assembled from components. They have all, save the bike, been assembled on our kitchen table.

Second, men like the tools required to build things. You should hear my husband speaking lovingly about his Dremmel. Men also like to talk about the building process. I know immediately when my husband is about to launch into one of these stories. Just a few hours alter his botched attempt to catch the lizard, he began to tell me more than I ever wanted to know about the servos on his radio-control airplane.

I have become adept at interjecting occasional “uh huhs” when there is a break in such conversations. Meanwhile, although my mind has wandered off, I instinctively know when my husband is winding down and can usually interject a question or salient comment to let him know I was with him all the way. Marriage maintenance, this is. I would put money on his doing the same thing with me when I try to engage him in conversation about, say, my hair.

When this happens, I fully expect him to mentally check out, contemplating instead whether the lamination on his aging windsurf board will hold up through another season.

This is OK. Over the years, I have actually learned about things that hold no interest for me. I know that a quiver is a set of sails, why rapid tire is superior to grip shift, that certain craft glues are thinner than water, and tidbits about computer networks, sound cards and firewalls. Funny, but these topics never crop up in conversations with my girlfriends. I can’t remember one time when my friends and I have used the word “aileron.” And I seriously doubt my husband and his buddies talk about their latest finds at Marshall’s.

My guys recently accused me of not having any hobbies. “Wait just a minute! I have hobbies,” I protested.

“Like what?” they asked.

“Well, I like to talk on the phone and drink tea with girlfriends. I just love a good bargain. And I like to read and hike.”

This paled in comparison to the balsa wood and Xacto knives they were using to build something, so I gave up. In their eyes my interests will always seem lame - but at least they don’t involve lizards.

Kerri Havnen Gordon writes The Living Experiment monthly for the Town Crier.

E- mail: livingexperiment@pacbell.net