I took me a while to understand this but I just realized that my girlfriend has never really answered any question I’ve ever asked her; at least not to my satisfaction.
And these aren’t exactly difficult questions like “What is the meaning of life?”, “Why don’t men have the kids and women go off to war?” and, “How does Kramer pay his rent if he has no job?”
I asked her if she wanted something to eat:
Her: You mean now?
Me: Of course now.
Her: When did we last eat?
Me: This morning. Do you want to get something to eat?
Her: How are you cutie?
Me: I’m good. Are you hungry?
Her: And we did go to the mall this morning.
Me: Yes. Do you want to eat something?
Her: I ate too much last night. We really need to get to the gym.
Me: Yes we do. We can walk to town and get something to eat and kill two birds with one stone.
Her: I do need my hair cut. Do you think it’s getting too long?
This went on for another ten minutes or so and the more I asked, the more I saw the answer slipping away like Wilson floating towards the horizon in that Tom Hanks two hour Fed-Ex commercial.
I thought about this isolated incident which wasn’t so isolated and I realized that no woman has ever really answered any of my questions. I’m no Alex Trebek and I’ve come to the conclusion that women are aliens speaking some strange language.
It seems that women are process oriented and men are more about completion so women aren’t about getting anything resolved when I throw a query their way; their goal is to keep me talking and getting me to do a little dance when I have two left hands in a righty world. That’s probably why my girlfriend would arrive home from work and complain about a coworker; I would assess the problem and give her a few potential solutions then walk away knowing I left a job well done in my wake.
She of course would be withdrawn and the next day, she would present me with the same problem and I would ask if she implemented any of the solutions. Of course the answer was a resounding ‘no’ even though she didn’t answer and I would have to guess that she didn’t do anything about the problem and I asked ‘why not?’ She restated the entire problem as if she was John Milton reciting Paradise Lost and I, of course, couldn’t interrupt because if I did, I’d be the insensitive guy who isn’t a good listener. I mouthed the words along with her in my head as this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this and thought about what time I was going into work in the morning because I would like to get in early just to get a head start on the day but I also want to sleep in so ‘work on your career guy’ and ‘I want to stay up until 2am watching CSI guy’ were in a virtual thumb wrestle the likes of which would cripple most hitchhikers.
The question she was posing to me was of course one of those rhetorical ones being that she didn’t want an answer and the rhetorical ones don’t really have an answer which makes me wonder why the question was even asked and it’s no better than those endless loop questions which provide more questions than answers but philosophers feel they have to ask them or they’d have nothing to say.
The answer to the problem was not something that could be immediately addressed and it struck me as one of those things that had to be pondered for a few weeks which is probably why some of my married friends drink so much and have selective hearing which makes everyone think they’re going deaf which is a great way to not have to answer anyone’s questions.
But for now, I’m too young to lose my hearing and I still don’t have an answer to any of my questions which is unnerving as I’m in a perpetual state of being hungry.
