okieinexile
Well-Known Member
An endangered species
By Bobby Neal Winters
As has been noted in this space before, I am a minority in my own house. There are four females and one male within the walls of my home and that makes me a 20 percent minority. In the yard, there is a female dog and three cats. Two of the cats are female and the Tom is neutered. Though the male cat is only outnumbered 3-to-1, I rather like my deal better. In the world at large, slightly more than 50 percent of the population is female, and no matter how you slice it, that means that males are in the minority. We are an endangered species.
I first got a clue about this when I went to an all-girls event in connection with my daughters. It was a "hoedown" of sorts and a quite pleasant event all-in-all, but there was a moment when I knew true fear. There were a group of girls who were dancing in the dim twilight around a campfire to that Dixie Chicks classic song "Goodbye, Earl." They were singing as they danced, and when they got to the part of the song "It didn't take them long to decide / that Earl had to die," they sang it with particular glee. My heart became cold, and a small voice in my head said, "The world ends this way."
I went home and tightened all the lids of the mayonnaise jars just as tight as I could. It is called job security.
Statistically speaking, there are more baby boys born than baby girls, even without the gender selecting abortions that are performed in certain parts of the world. However, the female of the species stands a better chance of surviving to adulthood. Some say this is because women are just tougher, but I have my own theory.
When I was a little boy, we had what my dad called a rock garden. There were all sorts of things in it, cacti, glass bottles, putative meteorites, and, of course, rocks. When I was about six, I became convinced that one of the rocks had crystals in the middle. This may have been because my brother told me. I'll let you decide. One of my grandfathers had given me a hammer, so having a scientific spirit, I decided to find out for myself. I took the rock in question from the rock garden, put it on the ground, and began tapping on it with my hammer. It didn't take long to decide that I was getting nowhere, so I raised the hammer high above my head, and brought it down just as hard as I could. Steel isn't often thought of as being elastic, though they do make springs out of it. In any case, the hammer bounced off the rock, reversed the arc it had followed down, and buried its claw in my scalp. I did make a scientific discovery: scalp wounds bleed freely.
A more recent story has been brought to my attention. It is about my high school English teacher, who for the purposes of this narrative we will refer to as "Virgil." It seems that Virgil was putting in some fence posts. To do this he had a device called a t-post driver. It is made from a piece of 2-inch pipe whose end has been welded shut. Pieces of sucker rods have been welded to either side for handles and weight had been added to the closed end to give it greater heft.
Virgil was dealing with a post that was being a bit stubborn, but he decided that one more blow would do the job if it were applied with a sufficient amount of vigor. When he came to, he noticed his vision was blurry. He decided it wasn't because of brain damage but only the blood in his eyes. (Remember my discovery, scalp wounds bleed freely.)
He thought he was in trouble, but about this time, some folks were driving by on the road, and he tried to wave them down. As this was in Oklahoma, where everybody is friendly, they just waived back and went on. He then got in his own pickup took care of it himself, though I've had no indication he has yet gone to the doctor.
My third illustration comes directly from my brother. He has quite a bit to mow and, consequently, has a riding lawnmower. There is one part of his lawn that has a rise in it which brings him to a halt, so he always has to back up in order to take another whack at it. Last week he decided that he simply needed to get a better run at it. It his calculations, however, he neglected the fact there was a ditch on the other side of it. In running at it, his mower was raised aloft and came down nose first in the ditch.
This is a modern mower which has a dead-man switch it the seat. The idea being that if you are thrown from the mower its engine will be killed. However, my brother has a broad posterior the right cheek of which was caught on the seat, keeping the engine running. There he was, trapped with one ankle pressed to the ground by the mower whose blade was still turning. His left hand was busy holding onto the mower, but his right hand was free to reach back and turn it off and bring this tale to a happy end.
Say what you will, but I haven't the imagination to see the female of the species as the protagonist in any of these stories. Man is the endangered species, but he has only himself to blame.
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, a writer, and a speaker. You may contact him at bobby@okieinexile.com.)
By Bobby Neal Winters
As has been noted in this space before, I am a minority in my own house. There are four females and one male within the walls of my home and that makes me a 20 percent minority. In the yard, there is a female dog and three cats. Two of the cats are female and the Tom is neutered. Though the male cat is only outnumbered 3-to-1, I rather like my deal better. In the world at large, slightly more than 50 percent of the population is female, and no matter how you slice it, that means that males are in the minority. We are an endangered species.
I first got a clue about this when I went to an all-girls event in connection with my daughters. It was a "hoedown" of sorts and a quite pleasant event all-in-all, but there was a moment when I knew true fear. There were a group of girls who were dancing in the dim twilight around a campfire to that Dixie Chicks classic song "Goodbye, Earl." They were singing as they danced, and when they got to the part of the song "It didn't take them long to decide / that Earl had to die," they sang it with particular glee. My heart became cold, and a small voice in my head said, "The world ends this way."
I went home and tightened all the lids of the mayonnaise jars just as tight as I could. It is called job security.
Statistically speaking, there are more baby boys born than baby girls, even without the gender selecting abortions that are performed in certain parts of the world. However, the female of the species stands a better chance of surviving to adulthood. Some say this is because women are just tougher, but I have my own theory.
When I was a little boy, we had what my dad called a rock garden. There were all sorts of things in it, cacti, glass bottles, putative meteorites, and, of course, rocks. When I was about six, I became convinced that one of the rocks had crystals in the middle. This may have been because my brother told me. I'll let you decide. One of my grandfathers had given me a hammer, so having a scientific spirit, I decided to find out for myself. I took the rock in question from the rock garden, put it on the ground, and began tapping on it with my hammer. It didn't take long to decide that I was getting nowhere, so I raised the hammer high above my head, and brought it down just as hard as I could. Steel isn't often thought of as being elastic, though they do make springs out of it. In any case, the hammer bounced off the rock, reversed the arc it had followed down, and buried its claw in my scalp. I did make a scientific discovery: scalp wounds bleed freely.
A more recent story has been brought to my attention. It is about my high school English teacher, who for the purposes of this narrative we will refer to as "Virgil." It seems that Virgil was putting in some fence posts. To do this he had a device called a t-post driver. It is made from a piece of 2-inch pipe whose end has been welded shut. Pieces of sucker rods have been welded to either side for handles and weight had been added to the closed end to give it greater heft.
Virgil was dealing with a post that was being a bit stubborn, but he decided that one more blow would do the job if it were applied with a sufficient amount of vigor. When he came to, he noticed his vision was blurry. He decided it wasn't because of brain damage but only the blood in his eyes. (Remember my discovery, scalp wounds bleed freely.)
He thought he was in trouble, but about this time, some folks were driving by on the road, and he tried to wave them down. As this was in Oklahoma, where everybody is friendly, they just waived back and went on. He then got in his own pickup took care of it himself, though I've had no indication he has yet gone to the doctor.
My third illustration comes directly from my brother. He has quite a bit to mow and, consequently, has a riding lawnmower. There is one part of his lawn that has a rise in it which brings him to a halt, so he always has to back up in order to take another whack at it. Last week he decided that he simply needed to get a better run at it. It his calculations, however, he neglected the fact there was a ditch on the other side of it. In running at it, his mower was raised aloft and came down nose first in the ditch.
This is a modern mower which has a dead-man switch it the seat. The idea being that if you are thrown from the mower its engine will be killed. However, my brother has a broad posterior the right cheek of which was caught on the seat, keeping the engine running. There he was, trapped with one ankle pressed to the ground by the mower whose blade was still turning. His left hand was busy holding onto the mower, but his right hand was free to reach back and turn it off and bring this tale to a happy end.
Say what you will, but I haven't the imagination to see the female of the species as the protagonist in any of these stories. Man is the endangered species, but he has only himself to blame.
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, a writer, and a speaker. You may contact him at bobby@okieinexile.com.)
