Tonight on the way home from AWANA, I witnessed the weirdest thing. As we were pulling up to a stop light, an ambulance went through the intersection with lights flashing and siren wailing. Before it even cleared the intersection a Fire engine came up to the intersection with its lights flashing and siren wailing. As the Ambulance went straight across the intersection, the Fire Engine slowed and made a right hand turn (which happened to be the direction we were going). The wife and I thought it was weird and speculated that there might be 2 emergencies occurring simultaneously in 2 different areas. As we approached the next stop light, we saw the Fire Engine make a U-turn (it was a divided road) and head back the way it went. It was at this point that we realized that the Fire Engine had made a wrong turn (there was nothing between the stop lights that would have needed a Fire Engine).
This got me to thinking. What is it about us guys that makes us do dumb things? Take the previous for example. You have to wonder whether the driver thought he knew a shortcut, got a bad address and thought the Ambulance driver was wrong, or if he just got distracted and made the turn he makes every day on his way home from work (autopilot).
The first one is something we men do as a matter of course. Think about it. How often have you heard some guy tell you that he "knows a better" way. We all do it. Maybe it's when we are driving, or maybe it's when we are doing some mundane task at home. We do it for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, it is just because we think we can shave a few seconds off the trip and sometimes it is just because you said we couldn't. I never said it made any sense, it just happens. I can't think of anything we can't make into a competition. The dumber the better. And we hate to lose. That is what us guys call a hint. Let us win every once in a while. The odds are that we are right every once in a while. The more often you let us know that we were right, the less we feel the need to tell you about it.
The second kinda ties in with the first. We can't always be right and if we have bad information, we tend to be wrong more often. Depending on the source of the information, we tend to think others are wrong if they contradict us (note that we may think you are wrong just for contradicting us regardless of the source, it's just the way we are.) Because of this fault, if we misinterpret or just plain miss part of what is said, we will continue to act on the previous information until we have better information on hand.
The third excuse, while inexcusable in this situation, is all to common. If there is a route or action that we take daily, we tend to do that action automatically. I know that you women do this to, I have seen my wife do it way to often. Say we are driving to a store that is on the same route we take to work everyday, the only difference is that we turn off one exit earlier. As we near the exit, instead of reminding us that we are exiting here, you start talking about how things are going at home. you just changed our train of thought from "don't miss this exit" to "yes, dear, that's great/sad/bad/etc." We have now engaged the autopilot because heaven knows we can't maintain more than one train of thought on our tracks. It isn't until after we are past the exit and well on the way to work that you casually mention that we missed the exit. Yes, we know, it is our fault, we were driving after all. We understand that you thought we knew where we were going. We did, you put us on autopilot and autopilot said this was the way to work, so we must be going to work. The same happens on the way home. Next time you are out with your guy and he's driving, ask him what the color of the stop light was when you are a block or two past it, I'll bet he can't tell you and that he starts to panic that he just ran a red light. It was green when we went through it and thus we dismissed it since it held no special meaning. We didn't have to stop and that was all we cared about. This is especially true if we are on a route we drive every day. As long as we are doing what we normally do, we don't really remember any of it. We did it right, we just didn't bother to waste the memory on it.
I think a lot of men go through life on autopilot. If you think your guy is ignoring you, he may just be on autopilot. It isn't his fault, really. It's just the way we are. If we do something repeatedly, we tend to find the most efficient means to do it and do it that way from then on. Once we get stuck in a pattern, we have to work to change it. This means that if you get comfortably into a schedule with your guy, you are well on your way, if you aren't there already, to putting your guy on autopilot. Once we are on autopilot, we don't remember anything. Why waste the memory on something that means nothing. Change it up, make it mean something. If he can't remember what was said or done, make sure he wasn't on autopilot.
Have a great day and remember, just because we are responding, it doesn't mean we didn't engage the autopilot an hour ago.
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