Finding Nemo?

Back when I was young and the world was new (right after the earth cooled and the dinosaurs came) and the optimism of youth made entertaining any career a possibility, there was a little while when I wanted to be a doctor.  Which is kind of funny because if you ask most of the people I work/interact with daily they'd tell you that when they have some sort of medical thingy going on they usually come to me about it first.  And I was smart enough to be a doctor, so it wasn't like that was the problem.  No, turns out that I hated biology.  Not hated it as in I didn't understand it and so got lousy grades in it (A's and B's) but hated it as in eyes crossed slit my wrists this is so freaking boring hated it.  I discovered my hatred for biology sophomore year in high school and it was further reinforced in my one and only year of college when I had to take it again.  Only this time with a book that could double as a step ladder for reaching the high shelves.  Since I couldn't imagine anyone becoming a doctor if they couldn't stand basic biology I pretty much gave that one up without a whimper.

One thing I do remember from those long ago days is dissecting the fetal pig.  You had to buy this whole pig package complete with a dissecting tray and all the stuff you would need, and then there would be an oral quiz on it or something when you were done.  I remember that pig hanging out in my dorm room for what seemed like forever, off in the corner, mocking my procrastination.  What can I say?  I put it off and put it off not because I was squishy or squeamish about it.  I just absolutely wasn't interested in the damn thing.  So of course I put it off too long, and the night before I was supposed to bring it in and show it off and take the stupid oral quiz I finally opened the book and started.  Oops.  This needed more time than I left myself.  Resigned, I hauled myself and my half done piggy (I named her Petunia) off to face getting a horrible grade.

Except, the TA was a guy (cute too) and apparently had some gender prejudices about girls and fetal pigs.  There I was with a half done assignment expecting to get called on the carpet for not completing the work, and there he was offering me an out because he thought I was too squishy to do it.  Since I'm no dummy, I let him.  Evil, I know, but I did get a passing grade on the quiz and managed a B in the course.  More importantly, I was introduced to the real differences between the sexes in the world at large.  Because you can bet your ass if that TA had been a woman she would have known in a second that I didn't complete the assignment because I didn't complete the assignment, and I would have gotten an F for sure.


Everybody knows that men and women are different (if you don't, you must have missed basic biology yourself and I'm not gonna explain it to you because both the last two times I explained to to anybody was to the two older daughters--and the response was unanimous--eeeewwwww.)  There are a million gazillion jokes and quotes and sayings about how men and women are different, but the one I keep coming back to is simply this.  Ask a woman what's on her mind at any given moment and (if she's speaking to you) you will get a list of things a mile long.  Because we always have something on our mind.  Even my 7 year old Bug knows this. 

Bug:  "Mommy, even when I'm not talking with my mouth I'm still talking in my head all the time."

Yup.  Though I wish she did more talking in her head, but that's a different story for another day...

But if you ask a guy the same question you will often get this answer:  Nothing.  Nothing?  How is that even possible?  No one is ever thinking of nothing.  I have the Band Aid theme running background and a list of things I need to do and the steps I need to take to finish what I'm doing now and the last conversation I had with my mother and what's on TV and what the daughters are fighting about right this minute plus I'm talking to you and you say NOTHING?  If you ever ask me what I'M thinking and I say nothing it means something and you had better think carefully if you want to ask again.  Cuz I really want you too which means it's something you're probably not gonna like and so when you tell me NOTHING is on your mind I get to thinking that maybe you are pissed or worried or something and so now I have to dig to get it out of you...

Here's the rub.  Guys really are able to think of nothing.  Or only one thing at a time which is almost the same.  It also explains why when he's watching TV it might take him five minutes to realize that yes, you did just ask a question.  Which of course is also frustrating for us ladies because now not only is he not telling us about the nothing/something he was thinking about but he's also ignoring us.  See how this works?  When it turns out the truth is he is really thinking of nothing, and that's that.

As someone who has a hard time shutting her mind off at night just to be able to go to sleep, I got to thinking about how wonderful it would be to be able to think of nothing naturally.  And then I thought that the only way to be able to do that was to actually be a guy.  And then I remembered that there are animals who do that.  Switch genders.

 

See, some of that biology stuff stuck.  My short term memory may leak like a sieve, but the mind is still a steel trap of interesting and mostly useless information.  Though after explaining the whole boy/girl thing to the daughters I can kind of understand why Disney/Pixar chose not to go into why Nemo would grow up to be a girl clown fish.  Nemo's dad becoming more motherly after his wife died makes a ton of sense once you know that that's the way it works for clown fish.  The female dies, and the biggest male becomes a female.  Sweet!  Maybe if people dads became the mom they'd figure out why it IS a big deal to just toss your dirty clothes on the floor in front of the  <usually empty> laundry hamper.  And they'd get to understand that yes, NOTHING is SOMETHING.

 

These guys do something similar but in reverse

 

 

 

Lady common reed frogs will change to guy reed frogs if there aren't enough males to allow for procreation.  (We are so not going there.) But you have to think that those conversations will go better too, because the boy used to be a girl and so probably gets the whole how girls think thing.  Yes, yes, I know that the reason fish and frogs can gender morph is for keeping the species alive, and I don't really think they have the same interpersonal issues humans do but just think...wouldn't it be cool for a day or a week to be able to get inside the head of the opposite sex by being the opposite sex?  Communication might be easier, expectations might be different and more easily met, toilet seats would be left down and toothpaste caps put back on and world peace could be possible...

 

At the very least, men would understand that nothing is something, and we moms might be able to have ten waking minutes of being able to think about absolutely nothing.