Nut toppings

I feel I should clear up a minor misunderstanding in my last post. Post the last posting, I discovered that my friend’s immediate, and seemingly, flippant response to the question of understanding men, was not as it sounded to my ears and, probably, to your eyes. He doesn’t do flippant, he said.

Turns out he was being thoughtful, (in his own inimitable way). Who would know? When I philosophize, I wax. When he philosophizes, he apparently sets it to short and seemingly nonsensical musical ditties.

“One banana, two banana, three banana, four,” was much more of a relevant and considered response, than face value would lead one to suspect. Despite outward appearances, it held no supercilious nor silly intent.

He was simply quoting lyrics from the theme song of an old Hanna-Barbera TV show, The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, which expressed his feeling about alleged differences between the sexes.

The underlying meaning of the lyrics, my friend inferred, is that all the characters, no matter how different, strange, or annoying they may appear to be, are simply facets of one being. A “split” banana personality, so to speak.

We are all bananas. Aren't we?

If we weren’t already crazy, living in this world would drive us there. Short drive for most. To me, this planet feels like one big holding psych-ward tank of sorts. We’re all in this Mulligan stew together.

I think if we weren't a little nuts, we'd be feeling very out of sorts here. As the Far Side joke, where a man is lying on the therapist's couch while the therapist in the foreground is noting on his pad, "Just plain nuts," says it well.

There are just various kinds of nuts topping the bananas in the split. No phallusies intended. It's all one big get your just desserts kinda world.

So, my friend was apparently saying with his response, female, male, schmale… Who cares? It’s all the same. Two sides, one coin.

He doesn’t go along with broad-stroking summaries of anything. He wants specifics. Engineer brain? He’s an exacting, detail guy. I’m a big picture girl.

I know he hates when I quote the latest brain research to prove males and females are organically different and, therefore, view things and think differently. Roll of his eyes, or often outright contradiction, is what I get when I voice my latest studies, experiments and theories I've read or surmised.

He wants not to hear generic statements that men think or do this and women think or do that. He says, no. You do that. All women do not do that. Or, I do this. All men don’t do this. Or maybe he just wants to feel unique and unable to be summed up by someone's theory that's meant to cover everyone of his sex. If he is a puppet, he holds the strings.

Now, I don’t know about you. But, I would say,case in point to that. Men and women are different, different halves of one brain or not. He seems to be the left half. I’m the right. I think men get mentally mired in minute material matters, and miss the over-all meanings. They analyze components of a thing? We analyze the thing?

That's probably why they seem better at creating and fixing individual machines, but not as good at the juggling acts women perform daily to keep the overall machine running. So, I’m back on that one-track male mind theory.

I think genetically and training wise, women are more finely tuned into what is going on around them in order to keep everything running smoothly and safely for the family, while also foraging for dinner and keeping the home fires burning.

This to free up the men to sit around those fires with their buddies, popping their Buds, and swapping their tales of all those fancy/schmancy tails that got away, barely.