Author's Note: This is intended as a satirical look at the differences in communicative abilities of men and women.
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It was a little before 8:00 in the morning when the doorbell started ringing repeatedly. When Susan opened the door she saw that her daughter Kelly was standing outside the door crying. She immediately hugged her.
"Sweetheart, what's wrong?" Susan asked.
"Everything." Kelly said.
"Everything...well that sounds like it will take a while to fix so let's go sit down and talk about it." Susan said.
They went into the living room and sat down. Kelly was still crying.
"Okay sweetheart, what's the matter?" Susan asked.
"It's John." Kelly said.
"Okay...what's the matter with John?" Susan asked.
"EVERYTHING." Kelly said.
"Well you didn't think anything was wrong with him when you married him 3 years ago." Susan said.
"Mom, don't make fun of me. This is serious." Kelly said.
"I'm not trying to make fun of you sweetheart. Tell me...what did John do that set you off like this?" Susan asked.
"Nothing...he didn't do anything...that's what's wrong." Kelly said.
"Okay...what didn't he do?" Susan asked.
"He didn't get us tickets to the concert last night." Kelly said.
"He didn't get you tickets to a concert and now suddenly everything is wrong with him?" Susan asked.
"Mom, a few weeks ago we talked for more than 2 hours about the concert, but he didn't get us tickets." Kelly said.
"Oh...now I see what the problem is. Kelly, you can't blame John for not getting the tickets. The only one you have to blame is yourself." Susan said.
Kelly looked at her mother.
"I came over here thinking you'd understand mom. I didn't come over here for you to take his side and blame me for what John didn't do." Kelly said.
"I do understand Kelly, but it seems that you don't." Susan said.
"What...what do you mean?" Kelly asked.
"Well...basically men are stupid." Susan said.
"You'll get no argument from me after what John did." Kelly said.
"That's not what I mean sweetheart." Susan said.
"Then what do you mean mom?" Kelly asked.
"If you'd talked to me for two hours about the concert I'd have gotten the tickets, but by talking to John that way you pretty much ruled out any chance that he'd get them." Susan said.
"He'd keep us from going to the concert because he was upset at me for talking to him that long?" Kelly asked.
"No sweetheart. That's not it at all." Susan said.
"Then what is it mom because you aren't making any sense." Kelly said.
"Men are very simple creatures Kelly. While women evolved as emotional caregivers that relied on communication men evolved as hunters that would silently stalk their prey for days at a time. They had one simple goal...one simple task...find an animal and kill it. They had to keep quiet to keep the animal from hearing them approach." Susan said.
"So?" Kelly asked.
"Don't you see Kelly...thousands of years may have passed, but the primal instincts and characteristics still survive. When it comes to communication men work on a much simpler level." Susan said.
"I don't understand." Kelly said.
"It's really very simple Kelly. Here...watch. Robert, could you come here for a minute?" Susan asked.
Robert, Kelly's dad walked in.
"What do you want sweetie? Oh hi Kelly, are you okay princess?" Robert asked.
"She's fine...we're just having a little mother daughter talk. Instead of cooking I want to go out for dinner tonight." Susan said.
"Okay. I'll call later to see if I can get us a reservation at Antonio's." Robert said.
He left the room.
"Do you see how easy that was?" Susan asked.
"What? What did you do?" Kelly asked.
"I made dinner plans for tonight." Susan said.
"Okay, but what does that have to do with what John did?" Kelly asked.
"Kelly, if you and I were talking about going to dinner tonight we would talk back and forth about where to go, when to go, what to wear, and all the while we'd throw in other gossip and things. It could take us two hours to make our dinner plans." Susan said.
"Yeah...we've sure done that before...we were making lunch plans that turned into dinner plans because we talked right through lunch." Kelly said.
"Exactly. I could have talked to your dad for an hour and ended up cooking dinner tonight. Instead I had a 30 second conversation with him, told him that I wanted to go out for dinner, and now he's going to get us dinner reservations." Susan said.
"I can see the results, but I don't understand it." Kelly said.
"It goes back to what I said at the start. Men are stupid...at least when it comes to communication. They don't handle long detailed conversations well. If you want something from a man tell him in as few words as possible. Simple inputs equal successful outputs. Complex inputs equal bad or no outputs at all. If you had simply told John 'I want to go to the concert' he'd have gotten tickets...probably very good tickets. Instead you spent two hours jumbling his head with so much information that he couldn't comprehend what you really wanted." Susan said.
"So it's better to talk to a man as if he were a child?" Kelly asked.
"Well you don't have to treat him like a child, that would be insulting...but direct language is the key to talking to men and getting the results that you want. I've been married to your father for 35 years. It took me the first 10 years to figure that out and it was really frustrating until I did. Once I figured it out though things have been much easier." Susan said.
"Okay, but what about the important things like talking about our feelings and stuff?" Kelly asked.
"You can still have those conversations; in fact they're much easier since he can actually participate. You just have to dumb things down to their level. Your dad and I had a nice long conversation Friday night. We were up half the night talking." Susan said.
