Roger Pires June 6, 2009
When he's not offering his take on daily life, Roger Pires spends his days as a computer systems analyst. It's not exactly a glamorous calling but hey, it pays the bills. He enjoys hockey, canoeing, snowshoeing, and spending as much time as he possibly can outdoors. He lives in Udora with his wife and two kids, who are his prime inspiration for Ravenshoe Ramblings.
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The "Y" Chromosome
The other night, my wife and I were sitting around the kitchen table when the conversation turned to home decorating. She attempted to enlighten me with some impressive mental gymnastics involving paint chips and fabric swatches. By the time the monologue turned to which shower curtains would look good in the main bathroom, I was gone – lost in a daydream about which lure to use at the lake on the weekend. I was silently debating whether trout prefer the Mepps Anglia #3 to plain, juicy night crawlers when I heard the most dreaded words in the English language next to, “Dad, this is my new boyfriend.”
“So what do you think?”
Quick, I had to make a decision. I could say I was so moved by her passion for colour schemes, I wanted to hear her entire recital all over again. Even worse, I could tell her the truth. But I didn’t have to say anything. She already knew – men are biologically incapable of focusing on the important things in life. Women cry while watching Oprah; men cuss at the TV during Hockey Night in Canada. She hangs potted geraniums on the porch railing; he throws dirty socks over it. They are the fairer sex; we rarely shave on weekends. Men and women. Two solitudes. We know THAT we are different but we have no clue as to WHY. It must be something in our DNA.
I thought the Human Genome Project might be able to enlighten me. At a cost of over $3 billion, it seemed to be the last word on all things genetic. This landmark research allowed the scientific community to identify and map the approximately 30,000 genes in human DNA into a series of coloured lines, like a high-tech rainbow. It could one day unlock the secret to what causes disease. It also told me, among other things, that humans have roughly the same number of genes as mice and twice as many as the worms I was thinking of tossing to the trout. It shed no light, however, on why guys end up in the barbecue section of Canadian Tire gawking at the latest wonders of grilling technology.
A notable sidebar to this extraordinary research was the discovery that we males are the agents of change. Somewhere in the depths of our genetic material we’re busy improving the lot of the human race. I would bet the entire cost of this mammoth project and raise you a quid that most women would be a little, um, skeptical about this. Especially after observing their agent of change snoring on the chesterfield on Sunday afternoons, the TV remote buried under a slag heap of Cheetos, and a steady flow of drool cascading down his collar and onto the family dog. They’d be more inclined to accept the finding that males are also the authors of genetic mutations. After reading the daily docket of professional athletes gone wild, I certainly would.
The inspiration for “vive la difference” must reside in our chromosomes: the section of coloured lines that determines who gets a sink and who gets a faucet. Women are comprised of two ‘X’ chromosomes. Theirs is a world of order, of symmetry. Men on the other hand have an ‘X’ and a ‘Y’. We are a collection of spare parts, of yard sale fodder collected along the trail of genetic back roads.
This motley array of biological flotsam may help us to explain the inexplicable. Like why men bestow such reverence on articles of clothing that are more open air than fabric. Why would any creature with the sense God gave seafood wear a t-shirt with more holes in it than Bush foreign policy? And yet, when our wives threaten to turn them into dish rags, we hide them in our hockey bags where no woman will go and fungus is king.
We can’t help it. It’s in our genes (or jeans). It’s why we belly up to the meat counter of the local supermarket and point a crooked, calloused finger at the largest, densest, reddest chunk of sirloin in the window. Why we stare, our eyes wide, as the butcher forklifts the mountain of beef onto a sheet of pink paper and delivers the payload to the waiting carnivore. If anyone ever thought to ask us why we felt such rapture at claiming an entrée that contained enough cholesterol to clog the English Channel, we would reply with the ancient mantra of the male ethos: “It’s mine and it’s big!”
Scientists will undoubtedly pore over every detail and nuance of our genetic maps for years to come. They may tell us who gets blue eyes and how to reverse baldness. With any luck, they may enable the blind to see and find a cure for cancer. And maybe, just maybe, the next generation of Einsteins will unlock the secret of why men are from Mars and women are from Venus. I have a feeling though, that some mysteries may never be solved..
