Shoes (According To Both Sexes)

Generally speaking, men simplify and women tend toward finer distinctions. A scene from the classic movie, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, illustrates this point.

Mrs. Blandings describes, to two contractors, how she wants her rooms painted.

“I want [this room] to be a soft green, not as blue-green as a robin's egg, but not as yellow-green as daffodil buds. Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow, but don't let whoever does it go to the other extreme and get it too blue. It should just be a sort of grayish-yellow-green. Now, the dining room. I'd like yellow. Not just yellow; a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshiny... if you'll send one of your men to the grocer for a pound of their best butter, and match that exactly, you can't go wrong! Now, this is the paper we're going to use in the hall. It's flowered, but I don't want the ceiling to match any of the colors of the flowers. There are some little dots in the background, and it's these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhock leaf, but the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom... Now the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic hospital white. A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white. Now for the powder room... I want you to match this thread... As you can see, it's practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy winesap and an unripened Jonathan...”

She leaves the room.

Contractor: You got that, Charlie?

Charlie: Red, green, blue, yellow, white.

Contractor: Check.

I think I've made an important discovery, though. There seems to be one exception to the rule of men being generalists and women being specialists. It is footwear.

The other day, I'm watching Family Feud with my wife. Steve Harvey says, “We asked 100 men: How many pairs of shoes does the average man own?"

I immediately say, "Three".

My wife gets an incredulous look on her face.

The number one answer was "Four". My wife was amazed, but I explained to her that no matter how many pairs of footwear a man owns, we guys only count SHOES as shoes. Ask a man how many pairs of shoes he owns and he will count only those made of leather and able to be worn with a suit. We do not count sneakers as shoes, we do not count boots as shoes, we do not count sandals as shoes. If it's a pair of SHOES, then we count it as shoes. Women, on the other hand, seem to count everything that covers their feet, aside from socks, as falling into the category of “shoes”.

I tested this theory, by positing the question on Facebook, and the answers returned almost wholly along sexist lines. Men categorized their footwear into sneakers, boots, cleats, whatever else and SHOES. And the women were almost uniformly unbelieving of our abysmal ignorance.

It is an anomaly; the only instance I've ever found that contradicts the usual pattern of man-woman thinking. I might apply for a grant to study this phenomenon. In the meantime, I'm going to watch some Three Stooges while my wife tries to figure out why she married me.

Soon, with more better stuff.