Chance observation in town the other day:
A man started to cross the road at a zebra crossing and the blonde woman with him followed rapidly behind. The cars and trucks all lined up at the edge of the zebra-crossing were revving their impatient engines and suddenly started to accelerate as per traffic light instructions. Caught off guard and realizing his miscalculation, the chap decided it was safer to back track before being squashed to smithereens. The blonde also had no choice but to retreat with the bloke. She was sooo annoyed.
He purposefully cracked a joke to his mates that the difference between him and her is that he at least always looked where he was going and that she did not and just follows blindly. Laughing ensued. She said nothing and fumed.
I saw the whole thing.
This is what ACTUALLY happened:
A man started to cross the road at a zebra crossing and the blonde woman with him followed rapidly behind. The cars and trucks all lined up at the edge of the zebra-crossing were revving their impatient engines and suddenly started to accelerate as per traffic light instructions. Caught off guard and realizing his miscalculation, the chap decided it was safer to back track before being squashed to smithereens. The blonde also had no choice but to retreat with the bloke. She was sooo annoyed.
He purposefully cracked a joke to his mates that the difference between him and her is that he at least always looked where he was going and that she did not and just follows blindly. Laughing ensued. She said nothing and fumed.
I saw the whole thing.
This is what ACTUALLY happened:
The chap did NOT look where he was going when he crossed the road. He just assumed the whole world would revolve around him regardless. This time he did make a mistake until it was almost too late and had no choice but to retreat or risk being seriously hurt.
The woman DID look where she was going before crossing the road. She realised her chap ahead of her was taking a huge risk as she hesitated to join him at first. But she DID choose to join da man eventually…because well, God knows why.
When the mistake became inevitable, both of them had no choice but to retreat.
In order for him to divert attention away from his own stupidity, he chose to crack a joke in front of other males at the expense of the woman to salvage his brittle tumescent ego and sacrosanct pride. She knew the joke wasn’t true but in order to say so, she would have had to admit to her own stupidity of making a bad judgement call of following a stupid man.
Although it can be viewed as a one-off joke about the eternal battle of the sexes, I had a sneaking suspicion that this was a recurrent pattern in their particular interactions when viewing their unspoken body language, which made me think if they will ever learn. This naturally made me think of Santayana’s famous quote:
The woman DID look where she was going before crossing the road. She realised her chap ahead of her was taking a huge risk as she hesitated to join him at first. But she DID choose to join da man eventually…because well, God knows why.
When the mistake became inevitable, both of them had no choice but to retreat.
In order for him to divert attention away from his own stupidity, he chose to crack a joke in front of other males at the expense of the woman to salvage his brittle tumescent ego and sacrosanct pride. She knew the joke wasn’t true but in order to say so, she would have had to admit to her own stupidity of making a bad judgement call of following a stupid man.
Although it can be viewed as a one-off joke about the eternal battle of the sexes, I had a sneaking suspicion that this was a recurrent pattern in their particular interactions when viewing their unspoken body language, which made me think if they will ever learn. This naturally made me think of Santayana’s famous quote:
I actually first came across Santayana in Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (yet another fellow admirer of history and a song written after a conversation with Sean Lennon) and then again in Dachau, outside Munich when I visited the first German concentration camp opened by the Nazis, where his famous quote displayed prominently at the end of the museum held particular poignancy. It’s a quote I am guilty of using frequently since. The other one I use often is:
“The like stick with the like”
This all goes through my brain in a matter of seconds and then I go off on another cerebral tangent…and another…and another. Frequently when people see me pondering and asks me to explain what I am thinking I find it easier to just say….“Oh…nothing much” than to go off on an exhaustive spiel. Heh.
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