By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff writer

Aside from the more obvious aesthetic reasons, I’m fascinated by the difference between men and women.
Take our reactions to certain things, for instance.

Miss Rhonda and I were coming home from church the other night when we saw a rattlesnake in the road.

This was not just a rattlesnake, mind you. I am not exaggerating when I say this snake nearly spanned the left lane. His rattles (or her rattles, as the case may be) were about the length of my ring finger, and thicker. This was a Jurassic snake, a snake for the ages, a veritable Methuselah and Goliath amongst reptiles.

We were both amazed by the size of the critter, but that’s where the similarities ended.

I wanted to stop the truck and get out to examine the critter more closely (albeit, not so close that I might have to use my miniscule first aid training).

Miss Rhonda wanted to run over said snake.

Not only that, she wanted to back up and run over it again, and do so repeatedly until she was fairly sure it was dead. My protestations that the snake wasn’t hurting anyone, was an amazing example of an animal, and would be worthless for the frypan were we to run him over fell on deaf ears.

“If you get out of this truck,” she said, “I will shoot you.”

Keep in mind that while she was willing to shoot her husband, she was more interested in smashing the snake to ribbons. I guess I should be touched that in her eyes, at least, I was worth the cost of a bullet. Some of my readers disagree with that, but that’s a column for another day.

My wife has a thing about snakes. As I have related before, she bypassed numerous firearms to find a shovel and a machete when she discovered a copperhead in the backyard. On top of beating the thing to death, she wouldn’t let me clean and cook it, thus wasting a perfectly good snake.

By the same token, Rhonda does not like to look for eggs since she spotted a harmless chicken snake in the barn. She’ll beat the most ill-tempered poisonous snake on the planet to death, she’ll probably choke one if she has the opportunity, but a fraidy-cat of an old chicken snake makes her run for cover.

Women. Sigh.

Herpetological horrors aren’t the only place I’ve found vast differences between men and women.

Another example came on a day when a friend found an old bottle of some sort of liniment in a storage room. We had no idea how old the stuff was, but since the lid came off rather easily, he had to take a sniff.

He immediately drew back in horror.

“Here,” he said. “You have to smell this,” and like a moth to a flame, naturally I did. The stench made the eyes water and the stomach revolt, so I naturally handed it to another friend who was standing nearby.

“Here,” I echoed. “You have got to smell this.” You guessed it. He did, too.

I realized afterward that we were three fairly well-educated men, two of whom faithfully attend church, and two of whom are good fathers. Yet some primitive urge required us to open a strange old bottle and sniff it, despite seeing the reactions elicited by the bottle.

The reaction from two nearby ladies, including my wife, were more logical.

“No thank you,” and “Are you nuts?” met our generous offering of a big ol’ sniff.

Women. Sigh.

Then there’s fishing.

I am blessed with a wife who not only loves to fish, but can and will bait her own hook, thank you very much. I once knew a fellow who was not so richly blessed.

Oh yes, his girlfriend loved to fish – but….

She wouldn’t bait her own hook. Casting was too difficult. The few times she caught a fish, she squalled for him to reel it in. And despite the fact that the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models had nothing on her, she steadfastly refused to fish in anything but long pants and long sleeves, thus causing complaints about the heat when they fished on a summer afternoon (mornings were too early for her). She would lie on a beach for hours wearing little more than postage stamps and dental floss, but move her to the pier and she had to be dressed for January.

Last I heard, she still loved to fish, but her boyfriend was cooling to the hobby.

Women. Sigh.

Of course, we men have our own foibles.

Years ago one of my college professors noted that, when his students finally came to grips with enough Elizabethan and Jamesean English to actually enjoy Shakespeare, it was often because he broke the story lines down to the most basic plots.

And yes, the more romance and intrigue and tragedy, the better the chance the female students would pay attention. The more swords, archers, lances and other manly stuff, the more likely the guys in the class would sit up straight and pay attention.

Naturally, when he mentioned this finding to our class, all of us – male and female – denied his assertion. Of course, the guys could easily describe what happened in Henry the Fifth, whilst the girls could discourse on Romeo and Juliet with equal ease.

So it amuses me when I hear the newest batch of studies coming to the conclusion that boys and girls are actually different, and think differently, and that most young’uns will choose toys which are gender-traditional if given the chance.

Four-year-old boys, the study showed, preferred toys like guns and GI Joes. Four-year-old girls truly enjoyed dress-up dolls and similar toys.

Shoot. I could have told them that. Just look at my wife.

Given the choice between a toy gun and a Barbie doll, she’d have gone for the latter any day of the week.

Besides, she doesn’t need a gun – as long as there’s a shovel handy.

Weaver is a staff writer at The News Reporter. Contact him via e-mail at jeffweaver@newsreporter.biz, or by telephone at 642-4104, ext. 227.