Have you ever seen a man talk with a toothpick in the side of his mouth? How do they do that? On the flip side, have you ever observed that behavior in a woman? I’m guessing the answer to the first question is “yes,” and the answer to the second question is “no.”
I hold to the belief that men go to a secret night school to learn some behaviors that are just foreign to women. Not only foreign, but also strange and unexplainable.
I taught a boy several years ago, who just about wore the skin off of me. He was smart, handsome, personable, and as lazy as a pig in the sunshine. I often thought he wouldn’t have drawn breath if the good Lord had not required it for him to live.
After threatening and bribing and praising him for even the slightest effort, and declaring I had just about given up, I called his parents for a conference. His mother wasn’t able to come, so she sent his daddy.
I didn’t know his dad, but there was an unmistakable resemblance. The kid was a clone. I laid it out to that man as best I could, while he sat and calmly used a toothpick during my soliloquy. I’ll admit that while I spoke, I was hard pressed to keep from staring at the dental work he was accomplishing.
Then it was his turn to speak. I tried to listen, but couldn’t focus on what he was saying. He had relinquished hand control of the toothpick and had placed it on the side of his mouth between his teeth and jaw. There it hung, bobbling up and down while he talked, never sliding out of his mouth or down his throat.
When he finished, I couldn’t tell you a word he said. I had kept my eyes on that dancing toothpick and marveled at his ability to speak with a piece of wood dangling out of his mouth.
Google reports that every year 9,000 people end up in the hospital from choking on toothpicks, and an average of three people die annually from accidentally swallowing toothpicks that puncture their internal organs. I’ll just about guarantee none of them were female.