Bullet points

October 18, 2007

 

Two nights ago, I heard shouts from outside and when I peeked, I saw our boarders fighting. The woman was shouting her lungs off while the man was sitting in the corner all subdued and very silent. The argument was about man’s total lack of financial support for their child. From what I understood, the woman was raising their kid alone somewhere in the province.

So I got bored listening to her and went back to my room to watch TV. I only heard a day after, since tattletales abound here, that the man slapped the woman allegedly leaving a mark on her face. I told one of our boarders to advise the woman to undergo a medical examination to file a case against his partner.

As it turned out, the woman already left for the province at daybreak. Of course, the man and his mother who we rented out our room to had to go. We don’t tolerate women-beaters here.

I’m not saying that she deserved it with her incessant nagging. I don’t know the whole story so this post is separate, though somewhat related, from what I just described above.

I read somewhere that a man speaks only an average of 2,000 words per day, while the average for a woman is about 22,000 words. That’s an amazing disparity. When you think about it, men could never joust tongues with women and expect to win an argument. Just when women are about to heat up, we are already stretched to our limit.

So don’t be angry if we clam up all of a sudden in the middle of the argument. We had to save a few of those 2,000 words for more important things like food, water, or beer. And by the time we get to the remote, all we have left is a growl.

Call us tomorrow instead so we can resume the argument.

Women, too, could never get drive their point across if they are going to bleed men’s ears with a deluge of words. Do you think we are still listening? Men are not hardwired to do that. From being kids, they are expected to be active and explore the world while the girls stay at home, play with dolls, and listen to mother as she breaks down the household chores for them. You know, in preparation for when they get married?

In cases of argument, don’t lash out and show your claws outright because you’d be seen as a direct threat. You goad, poke, and provoke and you don’t expect anything bad to happen?

Let’s review: If men are not hardwired to listen, how were they coached?  Men are driven by instinct. Sure, he can be trained through education, nurturing, and social interaction. However, that doesn’t take away his primal instinct to preserve himself, be the leader of the pack, compete, coordinate and resolve conflicts through direct actions.

Watch your man while he’s with his friends and you will hardly recognize him. He’s loud, raucous, callous, and coarse. Peer pressure? Not at all. That’s him in his essence, devoid of trappings of social customs and proper behavior since the pack has now become more real to him than all the non-representational societal politesse. Consider, too, that most thrill crimes – rape, mauling, stealing, or riots — are committed by packs.

I remember when I was involved in a riot. From a mere dirty look supposedly directed at one of my friends (which on hindsight wasn’t all that dirty to me) from the other table, the situation quickly escalated into taunting, bottle-throwing, and exchanging of blows. That wouldn’t have happened if one of the two tables was grossly outnumbered.

On the flip side, if one of those tables is outnumbered, he’d have been viewed as prey. My kuya had the habit of getting into fights. He never went out without his posse and sometimes I went with them and well, let’s just say, I have the knack of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One time, my kuya and about three of my male cousins ganged up on one man because he had the temerity to lay a hand on my girl cousin. Of course, while they were beating the man, I dug in and offered him a Pablo knuckle sandwich.

The higher the man climbs the ladder of abstraction, the better he is at controlling that instinct. In fact, the most successful marriages have men allowing themselves to be subjugated by their wives.

Along with that primal instinct is the longing (believe it or not) to protect and provide for women; that’s ingrained deep into their mammalian brains; a whiff of the days when Neanderthals hunt for food while women take care of the brood. 

Now it’s a matter of turning that knowledge into an advantage but I ain’t about to tell you how.

Though to drive your point across, I’ll give you a hint in two words — used most effectively in Powerpoint presentations and to explain cumbersome data.

Bullet points.