Woman Talk Man Talk

Here's a bit of a phone conversation I overheard on the bus yesterday.

Hello?
Oh hi.
No. No.
No, I did speak to her. And she said to ring Mandy.
So I rung Mandy, to see if she could go to the trivia.
Yes.
Yes, and I might have been a bit late because of my appointment at 7.30, but I'd still make it.
Yes.

Can you ever imagine a man having this sort of conversation? The best we can manage at the best of times is a sort of monosyllabic grunt, which works, most of the time we are around ... other people of the same sex. But with women... the conversation always seems to revolve around something Sharon told Karen that she'd heard Stacey tell Tracey, and the tone she said it in, and the clothes she was wearing at the time.

How could any man understand that? All the hideous complexities of human relationships dissolved into a single sentence? Give me a glass of beer and a roomful of men monosyllabically grunting at one another any day.

But there are dangers with that as well. I remember once I used the word 'uh' in an email with a girl and she said I was being condescending.

The fact is, a man could come home and find his wife swinging from the chandelier, wearing a Zena-like outfit, with the blood of their children smeared over her face (which is, incidentally, twisted into a demonic snarl), pistols blazing in both hands, screaming "HOW WAS YOUR DAY, MOTHERFUCKER????!!!!!" and he would probably answer,
"Oh, not so bad. How was yours, dear?"
before shuffling off to the kitchen to take his dinner out of the fridge.

Actually, that's an exaggeration. He might assume she was having PMT. But that's all.

Women are complicated.