It generally happened somewhere midway through the school year, that my students would become curious about a certain subject.

I suppose, if we were to be real here, they had been curious about it for some time already, and maybe the school room gave enough space, laterally so to speak, to broach the subject without fearing too many recriminations.

It always started with something like, “Well, this is how I see it, but I’m just a guy, and, er, well, I don’t know how girls think, really.”  Meanwhile, a few glances would get exchanged across the aisle, tentatively, of course.

Whereupon, I would usually stop the class we were in for the time being, go to the white board, and, in my characteristic lack of artistic ability, draw the diagram that explains life.  Otherwise known as a gendometer, short for gender meter.

It generally looked something like this . . .

I usually took time to explain the subtle nuances of my rather complex piece of art, pointing out that on the manpiece, it was either on or off, really no questions asked, and on the womanpiece, well, there really wasn’t an on or off.

Or, maybe today there is, but tomorrow there isn’t. 

Or, what worked yesterday, by flipping a rather innocuous looking switch, may cause minor explosions today.

Or, today the gauge may read entirely backwards of what it did yesterday, with, supposedly, the same interpretation as yesterday. 

I stressed two points in this little life lesson.

There was nothing to be taken personally, by the female gender in the room. 

And, there was nothing to be taken personally, by the male gender, when the switch thrown yielded different results than expected.

A person would think then, that if I had so much wisdom in this area back then, that it could follow one through life, smoothing the rocky places, and routing around the stumble points.

*****

My goodbye to the sweet daughter this last time was hard. 

Then our first flight was delayed, due to a computer reboot that involved shutting down the whole plane.  Which dominoed down to a brisk half mile walk in Chicago, and really no time for supper.

I was weary, already, but my good wife not so much, (a common occurrence) and the 3-hour drive home from Wichita, starting sometime after eleven that evening, looked daunting.

She wanted to drive it on home; I wanted to grab a motel. 

She saw my weariness, and, in the perennial goodness of her true self, booked a motel.

And it was good she did, for, as we approached our vehicle in the slightly damp parking lot, dimensions of perpendicularity didn’t reach the desired sum total, and the culprit was an entirely flat tire.

Being late and all, the situation had the tendency to become somewhat emotionally charged. 

Should we call an Uber, get to our now most inviting motel, and deal with it in the morning?  Two Uber fees plus airport parking . . . I saw the gauges and dials on my good wife’s gendometer flicker to life, and I got me out of the general vicinity while they were booting up.  Because, well, once booted up, what might they indicate?

The spare had never been used; never even brought down from its storage.  Would it descend?  Would it have sufficient air in it?  These were yes/no questions that I could deal with, and I did. 

Although, truth be told, once the spare was installed, some 30 minutes later, air volume was decidedly lacking. 

Gendometer gauges twitched, first one way, and then the other as I alerted my good wife to the problem.

 A nearby Sam’s was suggested. 

I said, no, Sam’s never has air, but we circled the lot nonetheless, making me fear a blowout was eminent. 

A half mile farther on, and, as it happened within two blocks of our motel, air was found, and peace of mind was restored on the part of the man.

And then, the issue of the missed supper was raised, regardless of the fact that it was now close to midnight. 

A McDonald’s was spotted, and, I decided now might be the opportune time to bestow a little advice about drive through manners.  Of course, opportune, in this case, completely inopportune. 

Here’s how it goes when we get into a drive through lane.  My mentality knows what the options are; they haven’t changed much in the last few years, and, I know I like most everything on there.  So, before I get very close to the ordering point, I toggle my inner switch to ‘on’ for such and such menu this time. 

Done.  A crisply decided decision.

So, as we approached the drive through, I got my speech ready. 

‘Just get decided ahead of time what you want.  It doesn’t matter in the long run anyway, what we might have at midnight after a flat tire has been changed, etc.,’ I was about to say.

And then, my ‘on’ switch clicked off without my consent.

And, this little teaching episode I am about to give comes to a sliding halt, as I remember another teaching episode almost 20 years ago now, in the classroom, involving gender differences.

And, as I think, “Men’s brains are like waffles, women’s like spaghetti,” I feel things hum to life in the neighborhood of my right side. 

Gauges that haven’t been known to give a reading fizz to life with frightening rapidity. 

Blinking lights segue into sounding alarms.

The result is, once my crisply spoken order has been given, the one near my right side says,

“I’ll take number two.

Wait, does that come with fries?”

“Yes, they all come with fries.”

“Well, I’m not sure I want fries tonight.”

(Long, inwardly suppressed sigh on my part.)

“Is that all you want?” the cashier asks?

“No, give us a little time.”

“Okay,” the one near my right says, “I’ll have number six without fries.”

“What to drink?”

“A Diet.”

“Diet what?”

“Just a Diet.”

And then, it’s our luck that they are out of number six.

*****

So, I sat there, and watched and listened with keen interest, as the buzzing and flashing activity of the gendometer flurried this way, and then another way. 

And, I smiled, even though our order got ordered three different ways, and the man at the window and I both apologized to each other for getting things mixed up.

And I realized, more acutely than ever before, that the blips, blinks, and signals that are so inscrutable to a man are not a mimicry, but a wonderfully choreographed thinking process that sees much more of the whole picture and its different outcomes than I ever could.

Because, there’s something about a woman.