On the rack… 03.10.07

Have you ever thought it funny that the magazines on display in doctors’ waiting rooms are usually women’s magazines? Of course it is probably prompted by the fact that most of the people in the waiting room are usually women I suppose. But that also kinda led me to wondering how come, if women usually outlive men, there aren’t more men in doctors’ waiting rooms. My thinking being that surely this would suggest that men are healthier and therefore need less doctors visits and therefore should live longer, but not so said my better half who happens to work in such a surgery. She insisted that most men would make sure they took their car in for a regular check to the garage to keep everything in working order, but they don’t come in for regular check-ups on their own health. Women do and hence the full waiting rooms.

Since I haven’t been to a doctor in quite a while I decided not to argue with her on that point, but I still do recall my last visit and the flick through the magazine rack while in the waiting room. Firstly let me explain that there was nothing else in that rack to read but women’s magazines – honestly, but secondly let me add…I discovered something very interesting. By quickly flicking through the magazines in that rack I discovered a pattern (well okay there were a few different knitting patterns but I’m not talking about them) and that is there are really only two themes to these magazines, even though there were about twenty different titles. Yep, judging at least by the covers of the magazines the two topics most interesting to women are (1) Why men are all disgusting pigs, and (2) How to attract men. Unhealthy, disgusting creatures that we are, it would seem that if we weren’t around, whatever about anything else, we could cause the collapse of the entire women’s magazine industry. Take for instance one of the problems sent in to an agony aunt in one of these magazines by a woman whose name I can’t recall so let’s just call her Martha. Her question was something like – “Why do men open a drawer and say, ‘Where is the spatula?’ instead of, you know, looking for it?” I couldn’t believe such a question would make the pages of a magazine, never mind discover that there was a whole rambling answer to it which included somewhere that it shouldn’t be that big a surprise since men could open a full fridge, then turn and ask “is there anything to eat?” Basically the whole page rambled on to express a commonly held (by women) negative stereotype about guys of the male gender, which is that they cannot find things around the house, especially things in the kitchen. In fact for a few seconds I wondered should I set about writing in a reply to this magazine, responding to this stereotype in a snide manner by making generalizations about women. But I chose not to. I chose, instead, to address her question seriously, in hopes that, by improving the communication between the genders, all human beings -- both men and women, together -- will come to a better understanding of how dense women can be sometimes.
I say this because there is an excellent reason why a man would open a drawer and, without looking for the spatula, ask where the spatula is: The man does not have time to look for the spatula. Why? Because he is busy thinking. Men are almost always thinking. When you look at a man who appears to be merely scratching himself, rest assured that inside his head, his brain is humming like a high-powered computer, processing millions of pieces of information and producing important insights such as, “This feels good!” We should be grateful that men think so much, because over the years they have thought up countless inventions that have made life better for all people, everywhere. I'm not saying that men have solved all the world's problems. I'm just saying that there are solutions out there, and if, instead of harping endlessly about spatulas, guys were allowed to use their mental talents to look for these solutions, in time, they will find them. Unless of course, they happen to be somewhere in the kitchen…		A DROP OF PORTER is the weekly column of Inishowen Independent editor, Liam Porter.