Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus (15 page)

I
am feeling great, and I will tell you why. It’s because of this article I read recently that said … um … it said … okay, wait just a minute while I get out this article …

Okay, here it is: According to this article, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania did a study showing that as males—but NOT females—get older, their brains shrink. Was I ever relieved to read that! I thought it was just me!

Here’s something I regularly do: I’m walking through an airport, and I see a newsstand, and I think: “Huh! A newsstand! I can get a newspaper there, and perhaps some magazines! I can read them on the airplane, and use the information in them to write informed columns!”

So I carefully select some newspapers and magazines; then I put them on the counter; then I get out my wallet and pay for them; then I carefully put the receipt into my wallet so that I can deduct this purchase for tax purposes; then I go get on the airplane.

Okay, here’s a pop quiz: What will I discover when I get on the airplane? You older, shrinking-brain males probably have no idea. You’re saying to yourselves:
“What
airplane?”

But you female readers, and you younger males, know the answer: I will discover that I left my magazines and newspapers back on the newsstand counter. I cannot tell you how many times I have done this. (Note to Internal Revenue Service: The reason I still deduct these purchases on my tax return is that I am writing about them here.) I could save time if, when striding through the airport, I simply flung money in the general direction of the newsstand.

Here’s another thing I do: I routinely go to the cleaners for the specific purpose of picking up my shirts, pay for my shirts, then attempt to walk out without my shirts, as though I were just visiting them.

Also: Many times I am looking
all over
for my reading glasses—looking, looking, looking, looking—and then I walk past a mirror and notice that they are perched on my head. “Ha ha!” they gaily shout to me, their lenses twinkling. “You cretin!”

Also: I have always been terrible at remembering people’s names, but now I forget names
instantaneously
, before they have gotten all the way through my ear canal. If somebody introduces himself to me at a social event, it sounds as though he’s saying: “Hi. I’m Blah.”

“I’m sorry,” I’ll say. “What was your name again?”

“Blah,” he’ll say.

“Ah!” I’ll say, smiling brightly while hoping that a meteor will crash into the building before I have to introduce him to someone else.

Here’s another symptom: I currently own four—that is correct: four—identical, unused tubes of toothpaste, because every time I’m in a drugstore and walk past the toothpaste section, my brain, which by now must be about the size of a Raisinet, racks its tiny shriveled self in an effort to
remember whether I have any toothpaste, and it can never come up with a definitive answer, so it always decides: Better safe than sorry!

(The good news is, if the price of Tartar Control Crest rises significantly, I will be a wealthy man.)

Anyway, I was very relieved to find out that this was not just my personal problem, but a problem afflicting the brains of males in general, although, as a frequent flier, I hope it doesn’t extend to male airplane pilots (“Ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching either Pittsburgh or Honolulu, so at this time I’m going to push the button that either illuminates the fasten-seat-belt signs or shuts off all the engines”).

The University of Pennsylvania study (Note to older males: I am referring here to a study showing that, as males get older, their brains shrink) also showed that we older males tend to lose our sense of humor. This is definitely true in my case. I was just talking to my oldest friend, whose name is … Excuse me while I look up his name … Okay, here it is: I was talking to my oldest friend, Joe DiGiacinto, and we were remarking on the fact that when we were teenage males roaming uncontrolled around Armonk, New York, we thought that the most hilarious imaginable human activity was the wanton destruction of mailboxes; whereas we now both firmly believe that this should be a federal crime punishable by death.

So my overall point is that the brain-shrinkage study makes me feel a lot better, because now I know that I’m not getting stupid alone; that billions of guys are getting stupid with me, as evidenced by:

• Golf
  

• Comb-overs
  

• The U.S. Senate
  

• Marlon Brando
  

Here’s what I think: I think Older Male Brain Shrinkage (OMBS) should be recognized as a disability by the federal government. At the very least, we should have a law requiring everybody to wear a name tag (“HELLO! MY NAME IS BLAH”). Older males would be exempt from this requirement, because they wouldn’t be able to find their tags. I have many other strong views on this subject, but I can’t remember what they are.

I
got to thinking about courtesy the other day when a woman hit me with her car.

I want to stress that this was totally my fault. I was crossing a street in Miami, in a pedestrian crosswalk, and I saw the woman’s car approaching, and like a total idiot I assumed she would stop. The reason I assumed this—you are going to laugh and laugh—is that there was a stop sign facing her, saying (this is a verbatim quote) “STOP.”

I don’t know what I was thinking. In Miami it is not customary to stop for stop signs. The thinking in Miami is, if you stop for a stop sign, the other motorists will assume that you are a tourist and therefore unarmed, and they will help themselves to your money and medically valuable organs. For the same reason, Miami drivers do not interpret traffic lights the same way as normal humans do. This is what a traffic light means to a Miami driver:

So anyway, there I was, Mr. Stupid Head, expecting a
Miami motorist to stop for a stop sign, and the result was that she had to slam on her brakes, and I had to leap backward like a character in a rental movie on rewind, and her car banged into my left knee.

I was shaken, but fortunately I remained calm enough to remember what leading medical authorities advise you to do if you are involved in an accident.

“Punch the car,” they advise.

So I did. I punched the car, and I pointed to the stop sign, and, by way of amplification, I yelled “THERE’S A STOP SIGN!”

The woman then rolled down her window and expressed her deep remorse as follows: “DON’T HIT MY (UNLADYLIKE WORD) CAR, YOU (VERY UNLADYLIKE WORD)!”

I should have yelled a snappy comeback, such as: “OH YEAH? WELL NOW, IN ADDITION TO MY KNEE, MY HAND HURTS!”

But before I could think of anything, she was roaring away, no doubt hoping to get through the next intersection while the light was still red.

The thing is, at the time I didn’t think this incident was in any way remarkable. I had no doubt that people all over America were shouting bad words and coming to blows with each other’s cars. It wasn’t until two days later that I began thinking that maybe we could all be a little more courteous. What got me thinking this was England. I went there to attend a wedding in a scenic area called Gloucestershire (pronounced “Wooster”) near a lovely little town called Chipping Campden (tourism motto: “We’ve Got Your Sheep”).

I’m not saying that the English are perfect. Their electrical fixtures look and function like science-fair projects; their
plumbing apparently was designed thousands of years before the discovery of water. Also their television programming is not so great. The TV in my room got four channels, and one afternoon the program lineup, I swear, was:

• Channel 1: A man talking about problems in the British gelatin industry;
  

• Channel 2: The national championships of an extremely slow-moving game called “snooker” (pronounced “Wooster”)
  

• Channel 3: Another man (or possibly the same man) talking about problems in the British gelatin industry; and
  

• Channel 4: A show (this is the one I ended up watching) in which five people were taste-testing various brands of canned beef gravy and ranking them on a scale of 0 through 10
  .
  

(Of course we have bad TV shows, too. But thanks to cable, we have infinitely more of them.) My point is that the English aren’t better than us in every way. But they are definitely more courteous. It seems as though every time an English person comes even remotely close to being an inconvenience to anybody, he or she says “Sorry!” Often this causes the other person to say “Sorry!” for having been in a position to cause the first person to say “Sorry!” This may trigger reflex cries of “Sorry!” from random passersby, thereby setting off the legendary Chain Reaction of Sorrys, which sometimes does not stop until it reaches Wales.

I’m pretty sure that the Queen, when she’s knighting somebody, taps him with her sword and says: “Sorry!”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had more of that spirit here? Wouldn’t it be pleasant if we tried a little courtesy, instead of shooting each other over trivial provocations? Wouldn’t
it be wonderful if, when we irritated each other, we said “Sorry!” and
then
shot each other? At least it would be a start!

In fact, I’m going to start right here and now. I’m going to address the end of my column to the woman who hit me with her car, in case she’s reading this:

Whoever you are, I am -sincerely sorry that I impeded your progress through the stop sign. And I am even MORE sorry that I hit your car with my fist.

It should have been a hammer.

W
hat I want to know is: Why is it important to have visible stomach muscles?

I grew up in an era (the Paleolithic) when people kept their stomach muscles discreetly out of sight. Most of us didn’t even realize we
had
stomach muscles; the only people who ever actually saw them were courageous surgeons willing to cut through fat layers the thickness of the Cleveland white pages.

I’m not saying we weren’t in shape; I’m just saying we had a different concept of what the shape should be. For example, our idea of a stud-muffin prototype male was somebody along the lines of George Reeves, who starred in the black-and-white TV version of
Superman
, playing the role of the mild-mannered newspaper reporter Clark Kent, whom nobody ever suspected of being Superman because he disguised himself by wearing glasses. (It is a known fact that if you put on glasses, even your closest friends will not recognize you; that’s why, despite all the eerie similarities, nobody has ever figured out that Sally Jessy Raphael and Mike Tyson are actually the same person.)

The TV Superman, who was more powerful than a locomotive, did not have visible stomach muscles. In fact, he didn’t have much muscle definition at all; he pretty much looked like a middle-aged guy at a Halloween party wearing a Superman costume made from pajamas, a guy who had definitely put in some time around the onion dip. From certain angles he looked as though he
weighed
more than a locomotive. But he got the job done. He was always flying to crime scenes faster than a speeding bullet in a horizontal position with his arms out in front of him.

Study Question:
Did he fly in this position because he HAD to? Or was it that the public would have been less impressed if he had flown in a sitting position, like an airline passenger, reading a magazine and eating honey-roasted peanuts?

When Superman arrived at the crime scene, he would knock down the door, played by a piece of balsa wood, and confront the criminals, who were usually suit-wearing men with harsh voices. (You had a better-dressed criminal in those days.)

“Superman!” the criminals would say. This was the signal for Superman to put his hands on his hips so the criminals could shoot their revolvers at his chest, an effort that always caused Superman to adopt a bemused expression because, as a native of Krypton with special powers, he knew that the criminals were shooting blanks. Then Superman would turn the criminals over to the police, played by Irish character actors in their mid-sixties, after which he would fly in a horizontal position back to his secret Fortress of Onion Dip.