The interviewer burst out laughing at this answer and brought the interview to a quick close at this point.
I laughed out loud too at this answer.
Because it is oh so familiar.
The opening scene of 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' sees a man brought in to the village doctor's house by his wife because he is 'deaf'. After a brief examination, the doctor works out the problem and duly fishes out a pea out of the man's ear. A pea, which it would appear he may have accidentally inserted into his ear from childhood.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin' is a war-film.
There are horrific scenes of death, betrayal and pain.
But by the end of this film, this man's only complaint is about the nagging of his wife. In the last scene of the film, he is practically begging the doctor to put the pea back in his ear because he can't take it anymore.
:-)
I don't know much about LL Cool J except that he is a rapper and actor.
I have never heard him rap but I have seen him in a sitcom or two years ago.
But like most men, he seems to have certainly figured out the key to a peaceful life :-)
My own musical hero Ludwig van had no such problems. Deafness, although of course is an unfortunate medical difficulty, could be, for the man looking for a silver lining to his raincloud, the perfect way of escaping some of life's little stresses.
What is it about women's chit-chat that men find so unbearable?
What is it about women's chit-chat that make men brave outside temperatures of minus twenty for hours at a time when they are not even smokers but need a desperate excuse to leave the frenzy of female conversation?
Even with 'masculine eyes' I cannot seem to get to the bottom of this one.
I do like one-word answers. Even to 'open questions'. I really do. It is reassuringly familiar. In this, I am probably one of the outliers.
But I cannot live with this all the time.
This is one big reason I have female friends :-)
One of the functions of 'the herd' is to preserve sanity :-)
There is an evolutionary benefit to a quiet man of course. Out on the hunt, if the wild deer heard you, neither you nor your family would be getting any dinner that night. In fact, if the hunted were dangerous enough to become the hunter, you might not even make it home to dinner.
I get that.
When I asked the question about why men are quiet during traumatic times, in The Quiet Man, I got decent answers that satisfied my curiosity somewhat.
"Men are stoic."
"It is not worth speaking when no-one is listening."
"It is just male nature."
I get that.
I also get that most men need a certain 'quiet time' usually after a transition from one activity to another, typically the transition from work to homelife.
I get that.
But the situation I am describing is neither 'out on the hunt', nor traumatic nor an infringement of 'quiet time'.
Take dinnertime, for instance. Which is precisely the time LL Cool J is referring to.
Is it physically painful to indulge in a little chit-chat about the day's events, or the political climate, or the economic crisis?
Or any other topic?
Or during social settings where the general theme is not sport- or work-related.
Why do men clam up?
Is there a reason other than boredom?
Is boredom ever a valid reason?
Or am I just in the wrong crowd?
It is known that a woman's 'corpus callosum', the part of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres is much more developed than a man's, even though a man's brain is bigger in mass, corrected for body surface area.
The part that deals with language skills is also better developped in women.
Hence to say that a woman is wired to communicate is in fact a biological truism.
But is there not a design fault in the system if the talker has no audience?
There would be no need for this post if men were known to be good listeners :-)
But again the number one (number two?) complaint about men is that they do not appear to listen to or hear women.
Which is odd, because the hunter has to have a keen sense of hearing, no?
Something does not quite add up.
Is there a chance of selective hearing going on, maybe?
Or is it really the case that men are not wired to hear women at all. Just each other, i.e. other men.
Is this a cruel trick of Nature that women can only communicate effectively with each other?
Or is it a design fault that God hasn't quite gotten round to fixing yet because he is procrastinating, but 'watch this space'?
Given that 'one day' to God equals a thousand years, we might be in for a long wait...
What you don't see is the woman yapping away in the background. This man is in 'tune out' mode :-)
Where do men learn how to do the 'tune out' thing? Is this part of the 'locker room' training?
