You Can Date Boys When You're Forty: Dave Barry on Parenting and Other Topics He Knows Very Little About by Dave Barry Page B
Authors: Dave Barry
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what our daughter Sophie is up to. Michelle knows because she actually talks to Sophie. Whereas I do not. I spend a fair amount of time in the car with Sophie, driving her to and from activities, and we’re happy in each other’s company, but we don’t talk: I listen to sports radio and she exchanges texts and Instagram messages with her fourteen million girlfriends. We don’t discuss these things with each other because Sophie doesn’t really care if the Dolphins need help at offensive tackle and I don’t really care if Girlfriend No. 11,368,421 and Girlfriend No. 5,820,327 are mad at Girlfriend No. 7,009,256 because she (I refer here to Girlfriend No. 7,009,256) said something to some boy in the cafeteria.
But Michelle
does
care about these things so she talks to Sophie all the time, which means that when we’re on our run she can fill me in on things about our daughter that I would not otherwise know, such as whether she is happy, what grade she is currently in, whether she has had any major operations, etc.
And it’s not just Sophie; Michelle talks to
everybody
. She has many, many friends, and when they call, she can talk with them for hours, even if they already talked earlier that day. I have maybe one percent as many close friends as Michelle, and, being males, they
never
call. This is fine with me because if they
did
call, even if we hadn’t talked in fifteen years, we would quickly run out of things to talk about. Within seconds we would be discussing the Dolphins’ situation at offensive tackle. By the end of a minute we would be down to awkward silence, and that would be that for another fifteen years. Some of my close friends could Sfrile. easily be deceased; this would not have a serious effect on our relationship.
I don’t think I’m abnormal. I think I’m a regular male person, and there are plenty more like me. For example: Some years ago, because I needed something to write a column about, I became an official Notary Public in the state of Florida and performed a wedding. The bride, whose name was Pat, gave me the following account of how the groom, Phil, proposed to her:
“One day he was telling me what needed to get done, and he said we needed to register the boat, get a fishing license and get a marriage license. So I said, ‘Wait a minute, what was that again?’ And he said, ‘Register the boat, get a fishing license and get a marriage license.’ So I said, ‘Are you serious?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got to register the boat.’”
Phil, a male, did not feel the need to get all blah-blah-blah about his decision to go ahead and engage in matrimony with Pat. He’d decided that the time had come for them to get hitched, so he informed Pat of this decision, thoughtfully grouping it with other to-do items requiring proper legal documentation.
Another example: I once ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant with a group of about ten women sportswriters and they got to talking about another woman sportswriter, whom they did not like. When I say “got to talking,” I mean they talked about this woman, and nothing else, for
two solid hours
. They explored in great detail the reasons why they didn’t like her; they analyzed the various possible causes of her behavior; they agonized over whether their feelings toward her were justified; and on and on and
on
. Finally, they noticed me, sitting quietly at the end of the table behind a forest of Dos Equis bottles, and they asked me if a group of men would ever have this kind of discussion about a person whom everyone in the group disliked. I said a group of men would handle it as follows: The name of the disliked person would come up and somebody would say, “What an asshole.” Then everybody would nod, and the conversation would turn to a more fruitful topic, such as the situation at offensive tackle.
I realize that I may sound as if I’m pushing the hackneyed old stereotype that women talk way more than men. So let me clarify
But Michelle
does
care about these things so she talks to Sophie all the time, which means that when we’re on our run she can fill me in on things about our daughter that I would not otherwise know, such as whether she is happy, what grade she is currently in, whether she has had any major operations, etc.
And it’s not just Sophie; Michelle talks to
everybody
. She has many, many friends, and when they call, she can talk with them for hours, even if they already talked earlier that day. I have maybe one percent as many close friends as Michelle, and, being males, they
never
call. This is fine with me because if they
did
call, even if we hadn’t talked in fifteen years, we would quickly run out of things to talk about. Within seconds we would be discussing the Dolphins’ situation at offensive tackle. By the end of a minute we would be down to awkward silence, and that would be that for another fifteen years. Some of my close friends could Sfrile. easily be deceased; this would not have a serious effect on our relationship.
I don’t think I’m abnormal. I think I’m a regular male person, and there are plenty more like me. For example: Some years ago, because I needed something to write a column about, I became an official Notary Public in the state of Florida and performed a wedding. The bride, whose name was Pat, gave me the following account of how the groom, Phil, proposed to her:
“One day he was telling me what needed to get done, and he said we needed to register the boat, get a fishing license and get a marriage license. So I said, ‘Wait a minute, what was that again?’ And he said, ‘Register the boat, get a fishing license and get a marriage license.’ So I said, ‘Are you serious?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got to register the boat.’”
Phil, a male, did not feel the need to get all blah-blah-blah about his decision to go ahead and engage in matrimony with Pat. He’d decided that the time had come for them to get hitched, so he informed Pat of this decision, thoughtfully grouping it with other to-do items requiring proper legal documentation.
Another example: I once ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant with a group of about ten women sportswriters and they got to talking about another woman sportswriter, whom they did not like. When I say “got to talking,” I mean they talked about this woman, and nothing else, for
two solid hours
. They explored in great detail the reasons why they didn’t like her; they analyzed the various possible causes of her behavior; they agonized over whether their feelings toward her were justified; and on and on and
on
. Finally, they noticed me, sitting quietly at the end of the table behind a forest of Dos Equis bottles, and they asked me if a group of men would ever have this kind of discussion about a person whom everyone in the group disliked. I said a group of men would handle it as follows: The name of the disliked person would come up and somebody would say, “What an asshole.” Then everybody would nod, and the conversation would turn to a more fruitful topic, such as the situation at offensive tackle.
I realize that I may sound as if I’m pushing the hackneyed old stereotype that women talk way more than men. So let me clarify
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