A short time ago Cindy asked if someone could please explain to her why men can fix everything, know how to get anywhere, and can tell you useless information, but can't remember to take the garbage out or even know their wife's middle name or birthdate?
Even as a married man, I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer these timeless questions but I am quite certain that these questions will always remain to be answered. Their very nature is an insight to the complex and dynamic relationship between the sexes. I stand accused and I am as guilty as the next man of the offenses cited. However, for my family I am both rock and shoulder. I am iron and fire. She is water and wind. I look at most things in my life in terms of accomplishments and trophies.....Yes indeed, I do all to often take my bride for granted. She was won a long time ago. She is a charmed woman though and recognizing that I am a man she knows I am a slave to my foibles. She is amused by my arrogance. I am smitten by her daring. It is the nature of the puzzle.
I offer here the insight of one much smarter and far more literate than I and further, suggest that if so inclined you may want to pick up a copy of his short story "The Diary of Adam and Eve". I reference none other than the venerable Mark Twain and following is a link to the work I am recomending you read:
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-exadam-1.htm
Here are a few excerpts (front, middle and end). Read the story and I believe that much will be revealed or at the very least you will have read a very amusing and insightful short story by one of America's great authors.
From "The Diary of Adam and Eve"
"MONDAY.--This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. I don't like this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals.... Cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have rain.... WE? Where did I get that word-- the new creature uses it.
TEN DAYS LATER.--She accuses ME of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said the Serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term meaning an aged and moldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they were new when I made them. She asked me if I had made one just at the time of the catastrophe. I was obliged to admit that I had made one to myself, though not aloud. It was this. I was thinking about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!" Then in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and I let it fly, saying, "It would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble UP there!"--and I was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature broke loose in war and death and I had to flee for my life. "There," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the Serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, and said it was coeval with the creation." Alas, I am indeed to blame. Would that I were not witty; oh, that I had never had that radiant thought!
TEN YEARS LATER.--They are BOYS; we found it out long ago. It was their coming in that small immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. There are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him. After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. At first I thought she talked too much; but now I should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. Blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit!
FORTY YEARS LATER.--Yes, I think I love him merely because he is MINE and is MASCULINE. There is no other reason, I suppose. And so I think it is as I first said: that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just COMES--none knows whence--and cannot explain itself. And doesn't need to.
It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together--a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time.
AT EVE'S GRAVE
ADAM: Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden.
And so the saga continues.....................
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