Perseverance Pays?
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
I’m not sure how old I was when I first began to realize that girls did not think the same way as boys. I suspect this flaw in a young lady’s thinking mechanism (God knows it wouldn’t be in mine) is the result of a glandular malfunction caused by far too many Cherry Cokes and the tight elastic legs on their old blue gym suits. (Do they still wear them in gym class? I hope not.) However having a few minor problems with their thinking processes doesn’t mean females should be discarded. Girls, and their older sisters, women, are delightful creatures and quite trainable. With a little patience and guidance and when properly programmed, the ladies can and often do develop into fairly useful and quite attractive members of society. Not that they should ever enter politics, Omigod no – there is a limit to what training can accomplish. One has only to look at Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and our own, Kathleen Wynne, to see how scary a woman with political power can be.
I’m also not sure how old I was before I realised I did not, nor likely ever will, understand women.
As I have said so often, boys are as stupid as fence posts. That is true only to a point. When it comes to understanding the female mind, I’m afraid the posts may be a few IQ points up on them. When a lad is 15 or thereabouts, about all he can handle on an intellectual basis is whether his socks match let alone how to figure out the workings of a woman’s mind.
Sixty-five years after I realized this, I have no idea what my wife is thinking. (That’s odd; there is something wrong with my socks. The pattern on the black one isn’t the same as the pattern on the brown.)
As teenagers in the 50s, boys wanted to know what those creatures which smelled so good were thinking. But I’m afraid the ultimate purpose of a lad’s curiosity wasn’t to be able to carry on a serious dialogue or understand the feminine viewpoint on world affairs, or for that matter, anything else. All he wanted to know was whether the girl he was with could be talked into some serious necking. I don’t know if boys are still interested in necking today. In today’s world cyber-sex or text messaging each other from several miles away may have replaced it all. As for going much farther, if she is covered in tattoos he probably doesn’t bother.
Where was I… ah yes, the ancient art of smooching. Imagine a teenage boy with no smarts whatsoever actually trying to talk some girl into a little high octane tonsil-tickling.
She would have said, “Are you nuts? I’d rather have a root canal.” Then he would realize this girl obviously had the hots for him and it was in his own best interests to hang around her locker until he got expelled, or stand behind the tree on her front lawn until she got married or called the police.
Short of pulling a gun, it is difficult for a girl to let a guy down easy. I’m sure there are couples out there today who married fifty years ago for the simple reason that one of them wanted to and the other didn’t know how to say no. That was a problem when Queen Guinevere tried to get Sir Lancelot off her back and it’s still a problem today as we struggle through the latest pandemic. Although Lancelot finally got past the royal chastity belt, so there is something to be said for patience (or being too dumb to take ‘no’ for an answer).
Actually Lancelot had an unfair advantage over the rest of us; he killed Sir Lionel in a joust. Then right in front of Guinevere, Arthur and the whole world, he put a lip-lock on the fallen knight and brought him back to life. That’s a pretty hard act for a teenager to follow. I was 14 and working as a dishwasher in Carter’s Restaurant. What in hell could I do to top a miracle like that? Get dried egg yolk off a plate? No wonder Gwen dropped her bloomers. If her knight could raise the dead, what could a guy like that do in a four-poster?
Arthur, being an enlightened monarch was quite decent about the whole sordid affair and forgave the two of them. Granted he did order Guinevere burned at the stake as well he should; after all a husband is always the boss in the family. (If Mary reads this I’m a dead man.)
