Oblivious

My wife just came out of nowhere and said, “You weren’t even listening, were you?” And I’m like, “That’s a weird way to start a conversation.”

Now I want to apologize ahead of time here to you men reading, if you are not one of these guys. You can continue reading while laughing at the poor schmucks who are. When I am done, I am going to Biblically prove my point, and you all will be astounded and amazed.

The following passage is from Dave Barry’s hilarious book, Complete Guide to Guys, 1995.

Tips for Women: How to Have a Relationship with a Guy

Contrary to what many women believe, it’s fairly easy to develop a long-term, stable, intimate, and mutually fulfilling relationship with a guy. Of course this guy has to be a Labrador retriever. With human guys, it’s extremely difficult. This is because guys don’t really grasp what women mean by the term relationship.

Let’s say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: “Do you realize that, as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: Geez, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he’s been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I’m trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn’t want, or isn’t sure of.

And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Elaine is thinking: But, hey, I’m not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I’d have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward… I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Roger is thinking:… so that means it was… let’s see… February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer’s, which means… lemme check the odometer… Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Elaine is thinking: He’s upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I’m reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed—even before I sensed it—that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that’s it. That’s why he’s so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings: He’s afraid of being rejected.

And Roger is thinking: And I’m gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don’t care what those morons say, it’s still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It’s eighty-seven degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieving cretins six hundred dollars.

And Elaine is thinking: He’s angry. And I don’t blame him. I’d be angry, too. God, I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can’t help the way I feel. I’m just not sure.

And Roger is thinking: They’ll probably say it’s only a ninety-day warranty. That’s exactly what they’re gonna say, the scumballs.

And Elaine is thinking: Maybe I’m just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I’m sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Roger is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I’ll give them a warranty. I’ll take their warranty and stick it right up their…

“Roger,” Elaine says aloud.

“What?” says Roger, startled.

“Please don’t torture yourself like this,” she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. “Maybe I should never have… Oh God, I feel so…” (She breaks down, sobbing.)

“What?” says Roger.

“I’m such a fool,” Elaine sobs. “I mean, I know there’s no knight. I really know that. It’s silly. There’s no knight, and there’s no horse.”

“There’s no horse?” says Roger.

“You think I’m a fool, don’t you,” Elaine says.

“No!” says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.

“It’s just that… It’s that I… I need some time,” Elaine says.

(There is a fifteen-second pause while Roger, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)

“Yes,” he says.

(Elaine, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

“Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?” she says.

“What way?” says Roger.

“That way about time,” says Elaine.

“Oh,” says Roger. “Yes.”

(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

“Thank you, Roger,” she says.

“Thank you,” says Roger.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two Czechoslovakians he has never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it’s better if he doesn’t think about it. (This is also Roger’s policy regarding world hunger.)

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.

Meanwhile, Roger, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Elaine’s, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: “Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?”

We’re not talking about different wavelengths here. We’re talking about different planets, in completely different solar systems. Elaine cannot communicate meaningfully with Roger about their relationship any more than she can meaningfully play chess with a duck. Because the sum total of Roger’s thinking on this particular topic is as follows:

Huh?

Women have a lot of trouble accepting this. Despite millions of years of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, women are convinced that guys must spend a certain amount of time thinking about the relationship. How could they not? How could a guy see another human being day after day, night after night, sharing countless hours with this person—how can a guy be doing these things and not be thinking about their relationship? This is what women figure.

They are wrong. A guy in a relationship is like an ant standing on top of a truck tire. The ant is aware, on a very basic level, that something large is there, but he cannot even dimly comprehend what this thing is, or the nature of his involvement with it. And if the truck starts moving, and the tire starts to roll, the ant will sense that something important is happening, but right up until he rolls around to the bottom and is squashed into a small black blot, the only distinct thought that will form in his tiny brain will be, and I quote,

Huh?

The answer is, He wasn’t thinking, in the sense that women mean the word. He can’t: He doesn’t have the appropriate type of brain. He has a guy brain, which is basically an analytical, problem-solving type of organ. It likes things to be definite and measurable and specific. It’s not comfortable with nebulous and imprecise relationship-type concepts such as love and need and trust. If the guy brain has to form an opinion about another person, it prefers to form that opinion based on something concrete about the person, such as his or her earned-run average.

Which leads me to my Scripture supported point about guys being oblivious. We go back to Genesis 2. God made man and commanded him that he could eat of any tree in the garden, but he must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for if he does he will surely die. Okay, so it is just God commanding the first man, Adam. Eve was not created until five verses later, so she did not have first hand knowledge of this command.

Then in Genesis 3, the crafty serpent (satan) asks Eve, “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” And she replies, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God said we must not eat fruit from the tree that is in middle of the garden, and we must not even touch it, or we will die.”

Well satan convinces her that she won’t die, and Eve says that the fruit of this tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, so she took some and ate it. Here comes the kicker boys and girls. She also gave some to Adam, who was with her, and he ate it.

He was with her when this whole conversation with satan was taking place. And instead of interjecting, “Honey, that is not what God said, I should know, He commanded me directly before you were created.” He just stood there oblivious. Or as I like to say, content to be clueless. As Dave Barry would have said, “Adam just said “Huh?”

When God finds out they have eaten the forbidden fruit, Adam blames Eve, saying she gave me some and so I ate it. (Gen.3:12)Why? Was he, like Roger, too busy thinking about the transmission in his car to have paid attention to what was transpiring in the garden with satan?

I know from experience, being married to my husband for over 41 years, that this is actually a thing. Out of the clear blue he comes up with a response to what we’ve been “discussing” and I look at him and wonder, is he really that clueless? (Now in all fairness, I’m sure he can say the same about me, in one or two instances over our 41 years together!)

Now, please don’t get mad at me, as I know the Bible clearly states that God created us in His image. I am in no way saying that God is clueless or oblivious. I know He is all knowing. What I am saying is that I love how things capture my attention when I read the Bible, and how I can see those things in the real world around me. Every Word of the Bible is God inspired, so there are lessons to be learned in everything we read in it.

So please take time to find the cool things God puts in your path as you read His Word. And ask for His knowledge that these things be shown to you so you are not like Roger and Adam, and say, “Huh?”

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