One area where Martians and Venusians fall apart is money. While a guy might understand that he should pick his shoes up off the floor (but never does unless prompted), he’ll never get why women buy things because they’re “cute”.
A man would never buy a cute hammer or a cute battery charger, but set a woman loose in a department store and she’ll come back with all kinds of cute stuff. I’m talking cute purses, cute shoes, cute you-name-it, she’ll buy it. Even when there’s a hole in the financial bucket, she’ll come back with a load of cute.
When things get tight, guy’s wallets freeze up. I don’t care if there’s a new kind of ergonomic loppers with a revolutionary ratchet mechanism that promises to cut branches two inches thick, a Martian might pick it up and take a couple chops with it, but he will never buy it. Because his wallet is locked and he’s thrown away the key. He might note it as a future purchase and when things loosen up, go back and buy it months later.
Women, on the other hand, show no such restraint.
For them, right behind “cute” in the “got to have it” category comes stuff that’s on sale. Marshall’s and TJ Maxx have made billions because they know Venusians can’t resist items that are marked down. One retail slogan used to say, “If you spend more, you save more.”
“I got it at Marshall’s,” she says, holding up her thirty-fifth white blouse. “Look, it was only $13.99.”
“But don’t you have a load of white blouses?”
“Are you kidding me? It was marked down from $39.99—that’s a twenty-six dollar savings! Isn’t it the cutest?”
See, women like to shop. Guys hate it. Ever seen the look on a Martian’s face when he’s perched on a settee in some woman’s store waiting for the wife? That’s the purest kind of pain etched on his mug. Because guys don’t shop.
Instead, they set out to buy something they need. Fertilizer, a lug wrench, WD-40 or AAA batteries—and that’s all they come back with. They don’t come back with a huge bag and proceed to unload twelve items, excitedly saying, “Look what I got!”
In the guy’s bag is one lug wrench and that’s it. Because shopping is not in their genes. Guys would never think of wandering through a store perusing items. They go straight to the tool section and select the lug wrench, total time elapsed from entering the store to checking out, maybe four minutes.
On the other hand, if a Venusian sets foot in say, Marshall’s, she’ll wander down the shoe displays for twenty minutes, picking up and examining various flats, sneakers, sandals. Now you may get the idea she’s looking for something specific—but she’s not. She’s just shopping.
Then comes the clothes section, then underwear, then this and then that. And to top it off, there’s a whole bunch of aisles in the back with shelves full of random items. Crockery, trays, glassware, curtains, ice buckets—this is no man’s land. No guy in his right mind would get caught dead in here. It’s browsing on steroids and women thrive on it. “Who know what great things you can find in here?” the wife asks.
“Who cares?” the husband says, “I’m going out to sit in the car and listen to the game.”
And when she finally exits, she jumps in the car and pulls something that looks like an object from the world of Jules Verne out of the bag and exclaims, “Isn’t this amazing?”
“What is it?” the hubby asks.
“Oh, I don’t know but I can use it for all kinds of things. I can arrange flowers in it, I can use it to hold hors d’oeuvres, put a bunch of pussywillows in it—there’s a world of things I can do with it. And you know the best part?”
“What?”
“It was only $17.99.”
This is where you see the chasm gaping open. A guy would never ever buy some gloppy-looking, green china thing that he had no definite use for. Not in a million years. And when the wife asks, “Don’t you think it’s wonderful?”
He’s forced to swallow his pride and say something like, “I’m glad you’re happy with it.” All the while thinking, “There’s a total waste of eighteen bucks for something that’s going to sit in that closet with all the other useless crap she’s bought over the years.”
Once in a while I’ll slip up and go shopping with her. The experience never fails to emphatically remind me how much I hate it. While she’s zipping around the racks checking things out, I’m standing in a trance right in the middle of an aisle wondering what the hell am I doing in here.
“Go check out the mens’ sections,” she says as she speeds by with an armful of clothes, obviously heading to the dressing room. I’m looking at my watch while I’m wondering, “Why don’t they put bars in department stores?”
Give me a beer and a big screen TV and I might just get to enjoy shopping. Then again…