Kara & Michael’s Blog

I’ve been a bit obsessive lately about noting differences between men and women. I finally got past the illuminating physical differences (hmm), but now I’m on about communication. I had a therapist, who was actually a counselor who was really just a licensed social worker. I’m not negating her experience or education – her bedside manner was to-the-point and a bit cold but she was among the most brilliant therapists/counselors/socialworkers I’ve had. Anyway, she told me a couple years ago that I should really be reading about gender differences, which I think was the nicest way she could tell me I expected far too much from the interactions I had with men.

But, I guess what I’ve come to realize is different men react differently when presented with the same situation. For example, today I was sent on the task of collecting serial numbers and things from everyone’s computer in the two offices we have here. I’ve spoken with maybe five people of 15 or so in the office across the hall. Anyway, I come in and steal people’s computers for a few minutes and the men generally react 2 ways.

1. They leave. They get up to run errands and leave me to mess with their computer. Very few women did this.

2. They stand around and make small talk. One woman in my office did this.

Most of the women, stood in their offices, displaced from their chair and watched me as I tried to rush through writing all the important alpha-numeric data. My boss just read me off all the information from his computer, so he must have been doing something really naughty on his computer. Actually, he expressed mostly pity for me having to roll around on the floor and look at numbers.

And I noticed another thing – men and women are about equally as messy with office stuff – but every man’s computer was easy to get to – the cables weren’t knotted up and all over the place. I frequently had to move things, unknot cables, unplug things and replug them at women’s computers. I’m an awfully messy person, but I couldn’t abide by a nest of cables at my feet. I like my computer cables to be neat and tidy, so I know what I’m doing.

I am not any more enlightened about men then I was before this. I’m still kind of awed by how many men are at this job – everywhere I’ve worked in the past year or so (non-profits) have employed primarily women. Heck, I live with a man and men still don’t make sense to me. They act like they’re so easy to understand but that’s a lie. Still, the mystery compels me.

Another train of thought: I like to spy on people. I am nosy. When I was younger, I would go over to one of my close girlfriends’ house and look through her room, her drawers, her bookcases. Whenever anything changed, I knew. She was pretty nice because she sat there and let me look through all her most personal belongings. I stopped once we got into junior high, but the urge to do that still strikes me constantly. An even older therapist who was a psychologist, told me that it was a practice that would make me a good psychologist. Maybe she was trying to relate to me or something. Anyway, going into people’s offices is fun because you get to do the same sort of thing, albeit in less depth. You look at baby photos and pictures kids have drawn and graduation pictures and pictures of grandchildren. Anyway, it’s always been my desperate attempt to see into how people live, but you never really can.

I guess I hoped spying on men would help me understand them, too, but I’ve been through pretty much everything WoDM owns or has written and I still don’t get men.

and on that cheery note, I’m going to go do some more work.

K.

The contents of this blog entry may not reflect the views of the Webmaster of Doom, Michael.