By Patty LaRoche
By the time God got around to creating Adam and Eve, He must have been in a jolly good mood. Time to have some fun, He told Himself. Why else would He create a kajillion differences between the two genders? He factored in not just the DNA (reminder: women are XX, the more balanced of the two, while men are XY), but basically every conceivable variance.
Take, for instance, golfing. Dave and I now have a home with a backyard view of the golf course, and we have been fascinated by the difference in how the two sexes team up to play the game. If there are six men golfing, six carts will be used, but if six women are playing, they will sit on each other’s laps to share a cart. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but at the most, for six women there will be two or three carts, not six.
Cart use is not the only difference. Women, unlike men, will visit about dozens of things other than their score while playing the game. That’s because women are all about relationships, not goals. Men? Nope. They will know who hit a birdie or an eagle, what the handicaps are, or who got a promotion, but nothing about who is getting married or who is in the hospital or how many grandchildren the other men have (unless, of course, those grandkids are scratch golfers).
Wives of golfers often discuss how little their husbands learn about their golfing buddies after spending hours with them on the course. “What did you learn today?” is a silly question to ask their husbands because the only thing on which Hubby focused was who golfed well and who did not. Women, on the other hand, will come home with news about everyone’s personal life, news their husbands do not care to hear.
To prove my point, a majority of Fortune 1000 CEOs said they did business with a golf partner. Correspondingly, 400 out of 500 Fortune 500 executives said that golf gave their careers a boost. For males, golf appears to be goal-oriented.
Perhaps that’s why golfer James Murray said, “Show me a man who is a good loser and I’ll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss.”
That’s not to say that golf cannot aid females in the work world. My daughter-in-law Kira recently applied to be a pilot for a private flying company. When the C.E.O. asked her what hobbies she has, Kira said that she has taken up golf.
“I hate golf,” the owner said. “Too much time spent trying to do something that can’t be done.” Kira was sharp. “Then we both have that in common because I hate it too.” Kira got the job.
When I asked my golfing sons about the six-cart issue, they said that it speeds up the game because each man drives his own cart to wherever his ball is. If two men share one cart, they have to drive to two different locations—which takes time (time women will use to discuss their families and build friendships).
I wonder if God just shakes His head when He watches His creation display their differences in something as simple as driving a golf cart. Or maybe He just smiles. Yes, I think I’ll go with that one.