usadeepsouth.com
by Beth Boswell Jacks
Surprise! Surprise! There's a new research study out (isn't there always?) about men and their primitive predisposition to things wacko -- like dangerous sorts of things.
The newspaper report of this new study grabbed my attention because every now and then hubby G-Man argues with me about his desire for a Harley. He says yes; I say no. So far my sensible thinking has prevailed, but after every motorcycle discussion I can't help but wonder why men are so dadgum stubborn and brash.
There's a television show called "Outdoor Sports" (on ESPN, I think), and last week I happened to catch several of the program's athletic events as I visited with friends. In one of the featured segments, the testosterone-charged males were hacking at tall tree trunks with razor-sharp axes, stuffing a flat board in the "indention," climbing up on the flimsy board, hacking out another hole in the trunk, stuffing the board in the next hole, climbing still higher and higher . . . until they could, with grim determination, whack the top of the tree smack off.
My pal Bonnie turned to me and said, "Why do men do things like that?"
Her question was rhetorical; she knew I didn't have a clue.
Cruising along in my vehicular air conditioning the next day, I passed a fellow in the middle of Mississippi nowhere. The guy peddled his bicycle down the highway under a brutal noon-day sun, his every muscle straining for one more push, one more push.
Obviously hot as blazes, hunkered over the bike's handlebars, this madman with set jaw was proving to all the passing world that, by golly, he was going to ride that bicycle until the tires fell off -- assuming the rubber was shed before his scorched hide.
Men. Who can figure? Why do they stubbornly pursue activities that are not only uncomfortable, but also life threatening?
Well, the new research study says our answer lies in the male and female brains. There's a primitive, fundamental difference. Would you believe women's brains are better organized to perceive and remember emotional moments?
I'm talking about emotional moments as in, "Oh, yikers! I almost broke my neck climbing up that tree and I've figured out right fast that trees are for squirrels, not humans, and hereafter I will not clamber up tall tree trunks." Or, "I rode my bike over to Betsy's house right after lunch and I was sweating bullets and almost had a heatstroke and that wasn't one bit fun and I will never ever in a million years do that again."
Males can't remember stuff like that.
This male/female brain research was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (sounds impressive to me) by scholars who used all kinds of MRI's and neurological tests on a couple dozen subjects.
"The wiring of emotional experience and the coding of that experience into memory is much more tightly integrated in women than in men," the project director, Dr. Turhan Canli, stated in the NAS journal.
In laymen's terms, these results simply indicate women are less likely to challenge fate and more likely to . . . think.
So there you go. Men are stubborn and brash because they can't remember squat. Figures.
But don't go fussing at men about their brains or lack of. They'll just seize on that part of the research study that mentions emotional wiring. Women are too high-strung, they'll say. Too tightly wound.
Yeah, but we're not climbing trees with axes or speeding down the highway with bugs in our front teeth.
Ummm, did somebody mention "primitive?"
BIO: Beth Boswell Jacks is the editor of USADEEPSOUTH. She's the author of 3 books and has been published in a number of magazines and small journals. She is a personal essay/humor columnist for several deep south newspapers. Write Beth at this address: bethjacks@hotmail.com.
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Read about Beth's SNIPPETS books -- two collections of her columns.
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