Men and Women, together ... WHY?! Part 1

Why do men and women live together? Certainly, procreation is important (as are the acts leading up to it), but aside from that, why??? We're really incompatible beings. Case in point? Road trips.

This morning, my wife and I loaded the children into the family wagon and embarked on our 100 mile journey home after a week in the mountains. This trip can be made in anywhere from an hour-and-a-half to two-and-a-half-hours, depending on weather conditions, time of day, traffic, and one's tolerance for collecting speeding tickets.

As a male of the species, any road trip in excess of one hour is a time trial - a battle between man, conditions and the clock.

No, there's no prize to be awarded for completing the journey in record time, nor is there any deadline to beat. Once the motor is running, the clock begins ticking, and getting home more quickly than ever before becomes a personal challenge - a chance to set the bar higher so that next time, the challenge can be even greater.

Automotive journeys require a combination of strategy and tactics. Any slower-moving vehicle ahead of us must be passed if it is impeding our pace. Passing requires familiarity with the road, knowing where passing zones are, and where visibility is optimal. Tactically, when the passing zones are at hand, maneuvering around the slower vehicles amidst opposing traffic requires deft moves and nerves of steel.

Fundamentally speaking, once a vehicle is successfully passed it can never be permitted to overtake you in the future. It must disappear into the rearview mirror, never to be encountered again. For this reason, our vehicle can never pull over for a bag of Slim Jims, a fountain soda or, heaven forbid, an impromptu dispensation of urine. Every pit-stop is an opportunity for those behind us to get in front of us; therefore, stopping must be avoided, except under the most-dire of emergencies!

My wife has been taking car trips with me for nearly three decades, and even though the rules have never been discussed, she has inferred from my behavior how such trips transpire - beverages and snacks must be pre-loaded into the cabin, and all human emissions must be dispatched before we depart. Based upon experience, the methods employed during these marathons should not be an issue, unless the free radicals occupying the back seats create some sort of disturbance.

Our youngest is rarely an issue. He can be a distraction, between his portable video games and the excessively loud Kids Bop tunes on his ipod, but all-in-all, he's an intrepid traveling warrior.

His older brother is the real wild card.

Our oldest has never traveled well. He's a human puke machine. Bulimics send him fan mail. Today, ten minutes beyond the mid-point of our journey, our boy loudly "ralphed" into a Wal-Mart bag (which we always keep handy for just such situations). This explosion marked the moment when our well-orchestrated, record-setting jaunt home began to unravel.

I had just passed a slow-moving vehicle, and was on the verge of passing another when my wife insanely suggested I pull over so she could attend to the boy, and secure our new vomitous cargo.

PULL OVER?!!!

If I pulled over, I'd immediately surrender the two positions I had just gained after several minutes of plotting and scheming. Pulling over was not an option. By doing so, I would certainly forfeit my shot at the record, squandering the last hour-plus of strategic/tactical mastery. I couldn't accommodate her. There was no practical basis for doing so.

After pointing out two separate locations on the shoulder where I could have pulled off, my wife realized I was not willing to yield to her absurd request. Resigned to my resolve, she unbuckled herself, turned around in her seat and dealt with the issue at hand, wiping the boy's face, taking control of the bag and tying it off. All the while, she chided me for putting her at risk, and for hitting a bump which splashed a little bit of the yak onto her hands before she could secure the bag.

To me, this was all inconsequential. The situation was manageable, and didn't mandate any sort of detour. I offered encouraging comments to my son, and soldiered on, undaunted, never breaking stride.

The rest of the ride was eerily quiet. At first, I thought my wife had grasped the reality that we may be on the verge of setting a new travel record, and was maintaining cabin serenity so I could concentrate on heel-toeing through the curves, and accelerating when the traffic opened up, but then I began to suspect she was perturbed for some reason. Perhaps what gave her away was her muttering under her breath about smelling vomit, hoping the bag wouldn't leak, and what a juvenile moron I was.

Ultimately, we reached our final destination about twenty minutes slower than the record. Not to make excuses, but the conditions today were less than optimal, and the various distractions that occurred during the trip took their toll. Regardless, the trip was not a failure. I had made a few good passes, had managed some of the hairpin turns with notable acumen, and turned in, if not a record-setting effort, a respectable one.

Overall satisfied with the trip, I shut the vehicle down, closed the garage door, and everyone disembarked.

Once my wife and kids rushed into the house to relieve their bladders, I proceeded to relieve the car of its cargo. When I brought in the first load, I caught my wife's gaze. She was at the kitchen sink, feverishly washing dried vomit off her hands, wrist and sleeve. - fact is, upon reflection, I don't think it was so much a gaze, as a glare. She had stopped talking to me all together by this point, and was completely unreceptive to my titillating attempts to strike-up conversation.

See? There's the problem, incarnate. Even after three decades together, we're really not on the same page.

If my wife had a "y" chromosome, she'd have never suggested I pull over so the family could collect itself after my son's digesting detonation. A male co-pilot would have opened my son's window and instructed him how to throw up out of a moving car ( a lesson that would serve him well when he's college-aged). - no need for a bag, whatsoever!

Then, upon reaching the finish line, we'd reflect upon some of the more momentous incidents from the journey, and either strategize how we could travel more quickly in the future, or anecdotally rejoice over various passes or driving exhibitions.


Women are wired differently. They're just as likely to pull off to the side of the road to take photos of the scenery, or eat a picnic lunch as they are to scramble to manage a liquid belch. When put on the spot, they never seem to recall an individual car that was passed, or a precarious powerslide that placed the vehicle on the verge of plunging into the river.

Men are inherently competitive, and recognize such a trip as an opportunity to beat the clock and perform various feats of driving heroics. Women see it as a chance to spend time together and drink in the surrounding scenery, as if the destination is somehow less important than the journey itself.

There're infinitely more reasons why men and women are ill-suited for co-existing. For today, though, let's file car trips as just another obvious example.