Ernest Hemingway once famously made fun of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s assertion that “The rich are different from you and me” by replying, “Yeah, they have more money.” With that in mind, I am sure that Ernest Hemingway would probably make fun of the statement that I am about to make, too, but that won’t stop me from making it. Here it is: “Fathers are different from mothers.” (Yep, I can hear ol’ Ernie now: “Yeah, they’re different genders.”)
Yes, I know that mothers and fathers are different genders. And yes, I know all about “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” but the differences I’m talking about go way beyond talking vs. grunting and socializing vs. retreating to “the cave.” The differences I’m referring to are at once way more complicated, and yet also much more basic, and are based, mostly, on how men and women see the world. And, apparently, we see the world in vastly differing ways.
I found this out (again) quite recently, soon after my son, Clyde, started middle school. It seems that one of Clyde’s first acts as a newly minted middle-schooler was to get in trouble for talking during the lunchtime announcements. His excuse? He was talking about the lunchtime announcements: since he was having a hard time hearing what the announcement was, he had thoughtfully taken it upon himself to ask his neighbor for clarification.
To say I was skeptical of his scrupulous veracity in relating this tale would be an understatement: I found it very hard to believe that his level of commitment to his new school was already at such a fever pitch that he would be willing to risk censure just to get the lowdown on a lunchtime announcement. Of course, it didn’t help that the way he told the story painted both him and his seatmate in the rosiest of hues. From his description of the incident, he had simply leaned over and whispered, sotto voco, “I say old chap, what time did he say the Socrates Club was meeting? I think it might conflict with the Junior League of Nations lemonade and shortbread social.” His partner in crime, meanwhile, had merely been guilty of an equally genteel reply. Yeah, right.
Bearing that skepticism in mind, my immediate response upon hearing about Clyde’s misbehavior and subsequent chastisement had been to tell Clyde that it didn’t matter what he had been talking about, or who he had been talking with—it was his job to keep quiet when one of his teachers was speaking. Period. My husband’s reaction, however, could not have been more different: when Clyde told him the same story he never even got to the part about lemonade and shortbread—my husband stopped him right at the beginning of the story, after Clyde said the words “lunchtime announcements,” and said, “What? Lunchtime announcements? Why are they talking to you about anything at lunchtime? That’s your time.”
He then muttered under his breath about “the one time all day you get to be left alone, when you just want eat your damn sandwich, and The Man has to come up and keep nagging at you…” And then he took Clyde aside and explained to him all of the various tricks for pretending to look interested and concerned when teachers/bosses/wives/mothers were talking to you, along with a little pep talk about not letting “The Man” get you down. It was, I could see, a bonding moment for them. And also a chance for me to see that while, for now, Clyde might still be in orbit somewhere between Venus and Mars, it won’t be long before his feet will be firmly planted on the red planet.
I can only imagine what Ernest would have to say to me about that.