“Do you remember the color of that sweater I gave you when I was a sophomore in high school?” my wife nonchalantly asked me. “You remember, don’t you? It was the first real gift I ever gave a guy. I was so proud of that.” We had been admiring the sweater our daughter had given me for Christmas. I stroked the sweater as my mind raced back 30 plus years, trying to remember and think of a proper response to her question. I could hear Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) whispering in my ear the same words he spoke to his endangered companions in the film, O Brother Where Art Thou, “We’re in a tight spot!”
Trying to avoid hurting her feelings and at the same time wanting to appear as her romantic repository of cherished memories, I struggled between confessing my ignorance and rolling the dice to guess the color. The color of the sweater our daughter had given me was brown; perhaps the odds were in favor of brown for the sophomore sweater. But then again, maybe it was the crew neck collar that reminded Lori of her love gift.
Fumbling for the right words, I sputtered; I stalled; I stammered: “It had a crew neck just like this one, didn’t it?” I asked, still holding the new Christmas sweater in my hands and hoping my question would spin our conversation in another direction. No such luck was mine. “Oh, yeah, it did,” she responded. “But you don’t remember the color, do you?”
Now her cards were on the table. But it was possible I could recover with a royal flush by coolly expressing my surprise at her question. “Of course I remember, you silly,” I could say. “It was brown, just like this one I got for Christmas. Do you really think I would forget the first gift you ever gave me? C’mon now!”
But if it weren’t brown—be it any other color— my bluff would be called, the truth would out and my royal flush would morph into a pair of clubs. And I would be emotionally indebted for days, weeks, months, who knows—maybe years.
And so there I was— the cowardly gambler, beads of sweat forming on my brow, my lips quivering, all the time thinking, Lord, why do women ask such questions? Why does it matter to them? And, how do they remember these things?
Men—we are different. John Gray underscored what most of us knew in his best seller, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. “Without an understanding that men and women are supposed to be different, it is such a temptation to think that men shouldn’t be ‘that way’ or women shouldn’t react ‘that way,’” Gray wrote in the introduction of his book. Since then, Walt Larimore, M.D., and his wife Barb, have co-authored, His Brain, Her Brain, that documents their thesis that, “there is ample scientific evidence that supports the fact that many of the dramatic differences between his brain and her brain are inborn.” In other words, there is no unisex brain. We are wired differently in areas that include sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. So, there was a difference in how we saw that sweater. “Rod-shaped cells (rods) on the retina are photoreceptors for black and white, while cone-shaped cells (cones) handle color. Women have a greater proportion of cones than men. So women can see colors better than men,” the Larimore’s point out. No wonder Lori could recall the color of that brown sweater when I couldn’t!
But the biology didn’t matter in that moment. I couldn’t say, “Oh, Lori, you remember the color of that sweater because you have more rod-shaped cells on your retina and poor pitiful me, I have fewer to act as photoreceptors on my retina, and therefore, compared to you, I virtually see in black and white. Silly girl, did you really expect me to remember the color of that sweater?”
No, even if science were on my side, I had to come clean, and so I folded, “I’m trying to pull that up, but I just can’t recall. Tell me about it.”
And she joyfully did. It was from the Surrey Shop, where I used to work in high school. And yes, it was a brown crew neck.
And to think my hunch had been right all along.
“And by the way,” she continued, “you do remember what you gave me that Christmas, don’t you?”
Okay, Ulysses Everett McGill: time for your line again, “We’re in a tight spot!”
Life Matters is written by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. David’s email is drdavid@davidwhitlock.org and his website is www.davidwhitlock.org.