How our brains process what our wives say

I was going to go down to Augusta National last week and win that golf tournament they had going on, but I've already got a green blazer and to tell you the truth, it doesn't really go with much of anything else in my wardrobe, so what's the point in getting another one?

Yeah, right. If y'all ever see me at The Masters, I'll be emptying trash cans and washing cars.

And speaking of golf games, mine is on life support.

No, actually it's much worse than that. Suddenly I can't hit the ball out of my shadow. I found some old scorecards the other day where I had shot scores in the 70s, but I'm starting to think those days are gone forever.

My wife, who has lots of answers for things, told me I need to start doing some strength training. I just sort of looked at her for a few seconds, thinking she was joking and waiting for the part where she bursts into laughter.

"Any second now, she's going to go, 'haha ha,' and start slapping her knee," I told myself. "Then she's going to say, 'I had you going there, didn't I? YOU lifting weights. Ha-ha-ha. Yeah, right. Go get 'em Mr. Olympia. Ha-ha-ha!'"

And I figured I would join her in her hearty guffaws and that would be the end of it.

But it turns out she wasn't kidding.

There was no sarcastic soliloquy.

Still, I remained silent, just to see what might come next.

"You need to get some free weights," she elaborated.

So I went to your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart later that day to pick up some stuff and when I got home I told her they didn't have any free weights.

"I checked," I told her, "and the weights they had weren't free. All of 'em had price tags on 'em. So what you should have told me to get were "cost weights," not "free weights."

Guess what? She didn't see the humor in that.

At least not like I did.

And I'm guessing in similar instances, most other wives wouldn't see the humor in that if their husbands said what I had said.

You see, men process what their wives say to them differently than the way they process what other people say to them. For example, when she said something about me needing to get some free weights, the "She Can't Be Serious" nodule in my brain kicked in and took over and it did so right after the word "weights" in the sentence, "You need to get some free weights." Anything she said after the word "weights" had absolutely no consequence because, cerebrally speaking, I had shut the ole noggin down because the ole noggin didn't think there was any way she could be serious about that.

This is how the male mind works. Women don't even know we have the "She Can't Be Serious" nodule in our brains.

But we do.

It's located right there between the "I'll Take That Trash Out In A Minute" and the "I Hope She Never Finds Out I Taped The Super Bowl Over Our Wedding Ceremony" nodules.

See, she's going to want to talk about her feelings and wonder why you don't cuddle much anymore. We, on the other hand, are going to be thinking, "Man, I just want to watch the game," or, "Show me the fifty bucks you saved on that dress" - both of which will get us killed if we say them out loud.

What's important to note here is that the brain in the married male learns to adapt. It develops these aforementioned specialty brain nodules to protect us from becoming involved in debates with our wives which we have no chance of winning and could ultimately end with her saying something like, "I don't ever want to see your face again unless there's a hatchet in it."

And our brains don't want to get hatcheted anymore than we do. That's the kind of thing that could really mess up the part in a guy's hair.

The other day, I heard someone say there are 13 pleasure centers in the brain. And I came this close (picture me holding my thumb and forefinger about an inch apart) to telling him, "Yeah, and 11 of those die after you get married and that pretty much leaves us with just football and power tools."

Which isn't a whole lot to ask to keep, is it?

And that, my fellow American males, is why we just want to watch the game.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.