My wife Marcia and I were on a cruise in the Irish Sea, headed to Dublin a few weeks back, killing time until the announcement to go ashore was made. Sitting with us in the buffet area was a couple from Hawaii. Actually, only the wife was at the table, her husband was wandering around with a plate of food, looking for her. He finally shuffled over and sat down with a sigh. \u201cI couldn\u2019t find you,\u201d he exclaimed. She glared at him, rolled her eyes and replied, \u201cI told you I\u2019d be at the table under the picture of the Titanic,\u201d and then turned to us and said, \u201cHe never listens!\u201d We knew she was right, my wife more aware of it than I, but even I\u2019ve been around long enough to know it\u2019s true. My wife responded to the woman from Hawaii, but I don\u2019t know what she said. I wasn\u2019t listening. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not our fault. We try to listen. We\u2019re positive we hear everything our wives tell us, but we don\u2019t. I think it\u2019s a right brain, left brain thing. When somebody talks, we are all ears, for about ten seconds. Then our brain switches to a sports mode. It drags up an image from our high school days, scoring the winning basket as the clock winds down to zero. Technically, it doesn\u2019t drag up an image; it invents one. We never had a moment like that. The sports mode of the male brain can\u2019t distinguish between fact and fiction. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just our wives we don\u2019t listen to; it\u2019s everybody. It\u2019s why we get in so much trouble. We\u2019re in a conversation; the other person talks and talks and then stops and looks at us and says, \u201cSo, do you think it\u2019s a good idea?\u201d We have no idea what they are talking about, but we never admit it. \u201cSure,\u201d we respond. \u201cThat\u2019s a great idea.\u201d Then we discover that we just loaned our car to our neighbor\u2019s teenage son for the prom. \u201cHow could you do that?\u201d our wife asks. \u201cIt sounded like a good idea at the time,\u201d we lamely respond. \u201cYou had to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m so glad women are getting into leadership positions in business and politics. It was a tough road without them. If a woman had been in charge of Ford Motor Company in the 1950\u2019s, when the sales team made the pitch to introduce the Edsel, she would have listened to them and then listened to the engineers that said it was too soon; the bugs hadn\u2019t been worked out. As it was, Henry Ford the 2nd, who, may I point out, is a man, was daydreaming about the Detroit Tigers when the discussion took place. When asked if they should move ahead and introduce the car in the 1958 model year, he said, \u201cSounds like a good idea.\u201d (It turned out to be the biggest lemon in automotive history.) No, we don\u2019t listen. And everybody pays a price. It\u2019s why the world is in such a mess these days. <\/p>\n