The Differences Between Men and Women

I met a really nice man a couple of weeks ago. We had an interesting chat about all sorts of things including trains. He observed that men tend to obsess about things and women tend to obsess about people. That made a lot of sense to me because Robbie notices things such as minor changes if product packaging, bus numbers, car numbers, the design of post poxes and lamp posts, that sort of thing. I hardly ever notice those things, but I notice if someone is wearing odd socks, looks sad, or seems worried, things that Robbie  would probably not notice. 


Yesterday I received further confirmation that men and women have a different way of looking at things. My son announced to me that his English homework had been to consider gender stereotypes and to analyse the way that Robbie and I use language, then to present his observations to the class. Apparently is caused his teacher considerable amusement when he told the class that I'd told him that men almost always consider their cars (and trains) to be female, but I know for sure that my car is male because it is unreliable and expensive to maintain! He went on to tell the class that our use of language indicated that Robbie is submissive and I am dominant because I use imperatives and Robbie uses tactics such as hedging, fillers and hesitation in response. I have to admit that it feels a bit creepy to think that our use of language gives away so much about us (assuming his observations are accurate) we will have to be more cautious in future!

White Knuckle Ride 20.02.07

One of the things that Sam and Robbie have in common is there ability to take you on a white knuckle ride through the English language. Just when you think you are heading in one direction you are suddenly careering out of control on a totally different track.

Sam goes back to school tomorrow after half term, so being a typical man he was busy dashing off some last minute homework this afternoon. He told me it was English homework and he went on to explain that he needed to finish on a cliff-hanger, but he was having difficulty finding the cliff!!

This evening I was busy typing a letter when I became dimly aware of Laura and Robbie talking about underwear. Suddenly Robbie turned to me with a magazine in his hand and said "I know these are women's, but I wouldn't mind some of these". I could feel my hair standing on end, was my husband telling me he was a tranny. No, he had simply changed subject mid sentence and he was showing me some truly hideous spectacles!

When Robbie came home from work this evening we shared a brief intimate moment and Robbie manage to swerve mid sentence from us to a two minute discrepancy in his train timetable for May. He followed this up with a brief explanation of difficult periods - I knew he was in touch with his feminine side but this was over the top even for him! Guess what, we were back on timetable problems again.