Men and Boxes

Last night I had dinner with a dear friend and fellow writer. The first hour or so we discussed the ins and outs of the writing world in Birmingham, which I found extremely helpful since I have been out of the loop for the last several years working as a secretary/legal assistant while we were sending our daughters through college.

Our conversation eventually drifted away from work and settled on our families. We are both married, have grown daughters, and are trying to care for elderly parents who live several hours away. We are the classic “sandwich generation,” sharing the trials and tribulations of juggling so many balls at once. It seems our minds are going a hundred miles a minute: for work, we are making calls to schedule an interview for our next story assignment, working to finish our current assignment or complete edits/revisions, and jotting down ideas to pitch to different editors; but since we also work at home, we are tossing the next load of clothes into the wash and trying to figure out what to make for dinner. Then, we get calls from our daughters—“My car is making this funny noise-what should I do?” and our mothers—“I’m not sure this new medicine is working properly,” etc.

Most nights I can’t wait for my husband to come home from work to talk about all these matters. I usually have at least five or six things I want to take care of, and I will rattle them off in rapid succession; at the end Dwight will stare at me with a blank expression on his face. My friend said her husband reacts much the same way. We want feedback and they are silent, which can be really frustrating.

“It’s because men can only open one box at a time,” she said. What?

Her newly married daughter attended a pre-marriage counseling session at a nearby church, and the counselor said that the brain is filled with a number of “boxes” where we compartmentalize issues. Women will open numerous boxes at a time and go back and forth, addressing many different concerns at once. Men, however, do not function that way. “A man will open one box, complete the task, put that box back, and then take another box out. They never have more than one box open at a time,” she explained. “They also have a box labeled Nothing, so when you ask them what they are thinking about and they say nothing, they are absolutely telling the truth.” We both laughed.

At last--an explanation of one of the mysteries of the male species! Although it really didn't solve anything, at least I understand it a little better. Who knew?