This Month's Story

Greg handed me a bill for the plumbing repairs he had done. We stood in the garage. I had called Greg to fix a small outdoor leak that had been bothering me, and, as usual, he had come and quickly fixed the problem. What was nice was that, as usual, the bill he handed me was reasonable. I began to write a check.

“I see you got yourself a new truck, Mr. Paul.”

I stopped writing and looked up. My pickup was in the garage. Usually Stella’s car would be in the garage and my new pickup would be outside under the metal awning in the driveway. But Stella was gone to Hattiesburg for the day and I had to unload some things. So my pickup sat in the cool of the garage.

“This is a mighty fine looking truck, Mr. Paul. I like the color white, makes it look neat, clean.” Greg walked around the truck admiringly. I had stopped writing and was following him around. I opened the passenger door. He looked inside.

“Hooie! Look at that. CD player, reclining seats, cruise control… Mr. Paul, this here is a nice truck.” He stepped back and looked to the rear at the cargo bed. “I really like your bed liner. I need to get one like that for my truck.”

After agreeing with him on all his remarks, I finished writing the check, then Greg drove off. I wiped some dust off the hood of the pickup, checked that the passenger door was properly closed and went back inside.

Later when Stella came home, I told her about Greg fixing the leak. “Oh, and he really liked the truck. He said he was going to get a bed liner just like it for his truck.”

Stella listened, nodding at the right times in an absent sort of way, and then said, “How much was the bill?”

Now that response from Stella is a perfect example of the difference between men and women. Men know there are some things that are important that women think are not and there are silly things that women think are important when men know they’re not.

Let me give you an example.

Stella was in the hospital recently getting a new knee and I was running back and forth. When I got home the first day, there was a phone message from Bobby Ruth. Her daughter Melissa was in town for a few days. Shannon had brought her new baby, Meredith, with her and Bobby Ruth was inviting us and the rest of the neighbors over to have coffee and see the baby; what she called a “Sip and See.”

It wasn’t till Stella came home a week later that I told her about the call.

“Did you go see the baby?”

“No, I didn’t have time.” As I said this, I realized I had forgotten to return Bobby Ruth’s call. I decided not to say anything about that.

“What is wrong with you, Paul. Sometimes I wonder… It was nice of her to ask. I’ll write her a note. I bet the baby was a darling. I wish I could have seen it.”

This is what I mean. Women are like that. Stella is no different. A women’s reactions when it comes to babies is always the same. Someone brings a new baby to work and everyone says, “Oh how precious!” “Will you look at those little fingers?” “Oh my heavens, he has hair.” Or no hair or one hair… And the very best remark, I think, of all, “Look at those big brown eyes!!” or blue eyes, or green. Good lord! Eyes, for heavens sake, are eyes, color them any color you want, they are just eyes.

To put it bluntly, when you look at a baby, if it’s normal, it’ll have all of these things. It's true they may come in different colors or quantities, but still what you see is just another says-goo-and-wiggles baby.

Despite this, there is built in every woman these squeals of platitudes, this gushing of inane banalities that are triggered whenever a baby appears. It’s a woman’s automatic response, whether she is in a nursery, at the super market check-out counter or even at a car accident.

Opposing this is the admirable stoic calmness that is normal among men during these female outbursts. They endure it all with a sort of earnest appearance of interest. To be truthful, it is sometimes hard to appear composed when the women you love sputters out things you can’t believe she is saying to a small thing that looks perfectly normal to you. But women do have many otherwise redeeming qualities, so I guess it’s best to stand there and nod and perhaps say something like, “That’s a real nice looking baby.”

I don’t know, perhaps, Stella is right. Maybe there are points of etiquette that I should learn. I wonder if I should drop Greg a note thanking him for admiring my bed liner.