Although we're all sick to death of the Men-are-from-Mars/Women-are-from-even-farther-out psycho babble - and political correctness still dictates that it is socially dangerous to analyze either too seriously or too humorously any possible differences in the psychic make up of the two sexes - sometimes a simple observation is forgivable.
For example, no one can really take exception to the opinion that it was no doubt a man who invented the beer can opener. It was also, no doubt, a man who invented theme parks and Auschwitzes, brass knuckles and dirt bikes. And as for boomerangs, women would unanimously point out that, "What's the point of throwing something away if you want it to come back to where it started?!?"
And only men could have been cement-headed enough to invent something as invigorating and possibly eviscerating as bungy jumping.
But it was in all probability a woman who invented the sneeze protectors covering restaurant buffets. (We American men are satisfied with the germicidal protection afforded by the gallons of tabasco sauce we inundate everything with, from jello to strawberry shortcake and beluga caviar.)
Women invented deodorant. Men invented tiny voodoo figures handcrafted from toe jam. Men invented pornography. Women invented babies in wicked response.
Women, I venture, also invented shoes. The fairer sex's notorious infatuation with foot clothing could well stem from the fact that back in the days of our cave people forefathers, men wandered more in search of food, and therefore had more thickly callused feet. Women wandered from the cave less frequently, burdened as they were with progeny, so their feet were relatively more tender and in need of relief.
But remembering our caveman days, men invented TV and remote controls. (After all, what does a TV screen resemble more than a cave opening? For millions of years we men huddled in the mouths of caves, looking outward, alert and constantly on watch for danger, our families thus protected further back in the cave. And what did we hold in our hands? A spear, a tool which enabled us to better control our destiny. And from a distance, albeit short.)
Yes, we men are only truly happy and secure when we're holding something pointy and potent in our hand.
Women, no doubt, also invented mirrors. My evidence for such an ungentlemanly accusation? Men's magazines are full of beautiful women. Women's magazines are full of beautiful women. Nobody, except homosexuals, really wants to gaze intensely at men, unless the men in question look like Brad Pitt. (Put a long blonde wig on Brad or Leonardo and they'll look like a Baywatch Babe, proving the axiom that all male sex symbols have something feminine about them, and all female something masculine.)
And it was most certainly a woman who invented the yellow light (you know - the light that flashes briefly between green and red, and which tells women to prepare to stop, and men to floor it.) No man would have thought up this symbol of hesitancy and caution. Stop dithering, we reason. Screw this transitory indecision!
But one debate currently taking place, is between a majority who believes that it was oppressive men who invented and have forced middle eastern women to wear the veil, and a less certain minority who point out it could well have been women who invented the device in days long past to protect themselves from lustful gazes of (..or to further inflame?) men. Conversely, it was probably an altruistic man who invented the push up bra in order to make mountains out of molehills, as we men are wont to do.
Women invented leg and bikini waxing. No Marquis de Sade could ever have been so inventively cruel. And if women hadn't invented the cotton ball-make up remover, there would have been no need to import 3 million slaves from Africa!
And speaking of unforeseen and unfortunate consequences, couldn't the blockheaded men who invented the birth control pill have guessed, that along with greater access to women's bodies, we men would now have to subject ourselves to being measured and then compared with other men, our sexual performances judged and ridiculed by the formerly innocent and inexperienced sex? Why couldn't these rational researchers have fine-tuned the recipe and added knock out drops to the subscription?
If women are going to lie there anyway, they may as well catch up on their beauty sleep.
And, oh, yes - men invented sleep. So that we can, if only briefly, get out of having to listen to incessant chatter. (Adam probably deliberately invented the apple pie, thereby inviting aging and death for the same reason. Thanks to Great Gramps an eternity of yammering was thusly made preventable.)
