Want a Cup of Coffee?

Chula Vista, CA
Outside of San Diego

 Men have a curiously strange inability to multi-task, I read somewhere, and recently I have witnessed the proof of that theory.  I just asked my husband if he wanted a cup of coffee.  “Want a cup of coffee?” I said.  The pot had been sitting on the counter for two hours and I wanted to dump the unwanted coffee and clean the pot.

“What?” he said, grunting and looking surprised.

“Coffee,” I said.

“What about it?”  he answered.

“Do you want some?”  I replied.

“No, why?” he answered testily, looking up from his computer.

Uh-oh.  Here was my fork in the road.  I could go the good wife route and tell him I was sorry for bothering him and to never mind.  Or, I could go the Betty route and respond with slight pique, “Why do you want coffee?  I don’t know.  Maybe you’d like some.  Then again, maybe I can wash the pot.”

“I’m busy,” he said.  “I can’t think about that now.”

Oh I’m sorry.  I’ll just try and figure out when you are not doing something, or thinking about something, and then I’ll ask.  Like when you’re sleeping, that’s when I’ll ask. 

The other day I asked him a question and he refused to answer me because he was busy turning a key in a lock.  Now that required real concentration and deep mental commitment. 

I guess the point is, we women whose lives revolve around multi-tasking, find this point of difference in the species quite amusing.

Imagine.  You’re doing the laundry, separating the darks from the lights, choosing the cycle, filling the soap dispenser, when little Fauntleroy comes in to confess that he had tossed one of Daddy’s forbidden darts and it somehow landed in Abercrombie’s hair, and there’s blood coming down his face in rivers and you better come quick.

"Can’t you see I’m busy here?"  Go tell Daddy.