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The Citizen, 2009-11-26, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2009. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Men are stupid and women are crazy. And the reason women are so crazy is because men are so stupid. – George Carlin Over the last dozen years 648 Americans have been flash barbecued into the afterworld by lightning strikes. An astounding 524 of them – more than 80 per cent – had one factor (aside from citizenship) in common. Care to guess? Pockets full of iron filings, perhaps? Horseshoes in their fedoras you think? A big sign reading GOD IS DEAD Scotch-taped to their backsides? Nope – what they had in common was gender. More than eight out of every 10 Americans struck and killed by lightning were men. Some of them were fishing; others were out on the golf course or playing baseball. Some were just mowing the lawn. Scientists have been mulling over this mystery for a few years now. Just what is it that causes lightning to single out such a preponderance of men over women for fatal strikes? Some deep thinkers thought it might be a variation on the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ – men being statistically taller than women would theoretically make them better conductors of electricity, but no, analysis showed that the men who died weren’t particularly tall. Others wondered if there might be some electro-magnetic component in testosterone that was attracting those lightning bolts. Then somebody said, “Maybe we should study women to see if they have some genetic condition that protects them from fatal lightning strikes.” Turns out they do. Far fewer women are killed by lightning because when the skies start to grumble women who find themselves outdoors instinctively respond to a primordial, inbred reflex. They seek shelter. You won’t find many women casting for trout, driving a golf ball or shagging pop flies in a thunderstorm because, to put it bluntly, such behaviour is dumb. Men? Well…. “Men take more risks in lightning storms,” says John Jensenius of the U.S. National Weather Service. Why? Good question. Could be that men, too, are responding to a primordial instinct. Call it the John Wayne reflex – the one that says a man should always appear macho and fearsome when danger lurks. Even when it’s just plain stupid. So far it’s just a theory, but it goes a long way towards explaining phenomena like professional wrestling, barroom head-butting contests and the continuing adulation of Don Cherry. Not to mention the behaviour of those two macaroons who, last month, thought it would be a good idea to sneak into the Siberian tiger enclosure at the Calgary zoo in the middle of the night. No doubt the tiger thought it was a good idea too. It was his first taste of free-range cretin. The two intruders were lucky to escape with a mauling, but I doubt their luck will hold. Those guys are two lightning strikes waiting to happen. Which brings us to Steve Melvin of Madison, Ohio. Steve not only stays out in lightning storms, he’s willing to drive hundreds of miles to do it. Steve is a ‘storm-chaser’ – a guy who gets his jollies by driving into thunderstorms, getting out of the car and taking photos. In June, 1989, Steve got his near-death wish – he was struck by a bolt of lightning. Or rather his camera was. The lightning melted the camera right down the front of the tripod, but somehow the film inside was not destroyed. When it was developed, Steve claims that the final exposure on the film shows the ghostly outline of a human figure framed in the lightning flash. It couldn’t be Steve – he was behind the camera. “I’ve heard all the guesses,” says Steve. “Some say it was me having an out-of-body experience; others say it was something from a whole different dimension. My wife says it looks like my grandmother come down from heaven.” I’d go with the grandmother explanation, Steve. And I bet if you could hear her, she’d be saying, “Get your butt indoors, you idiot!” Arthur Black Other Views Too dumb to come in out of the rain Ontarians are shocked that a privileged few have jumped the queue for H1N1 flu shots. But quicker service for those who know the right people is as ingrained in the healthcare system as x-rays and scalpels. This is not to suggest queue-jumping is the norm. But there is plenty of evidence of it and enough to be a concern. Those who benefit include relatives and friends of some, but not all, doctors and others connected to healthcare and personalities in the news media, some of whom spend most of their working days deploring such unfairness. The current outcry has grown because some professional athletes, senior police officers and members of boards that run hospitals, none of whom is in particular danger of contracting the illness, have been given flu shots ahead of those more vulnerable. Health Minister Deb Matthews angrily said that people who are rich and famous should not have priority over those more in need. Those who have jumped line-ups include Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, who wrote in the chatty way columnists describe their own lives that she needed a hip replacement to correct pain, for which she deserves sympathy, but the first surgeon she consulted told her the waiting list was a year long. She then turned to “a well-placed acquaintance,” who contacted another surgeon, who squeezed in an appointment for her within two days. The columnist acknowledged she “felt uncomfortable, pulling strings,” but she quickly overcame such scruples and asked for favours. A surgeon eventually told her she would have to wait six months for the surgery, but she cried and he took pity and did it in half that time. Christie Blatchford, now a columnist with the Globe and Mail, but at the time writing for The National Post, wrote that her mother, 83 and suffering from serious lung ailments, could not get permission to stay in the nursing home she had chosen. The home had five empty beds, but a community care access centre, which allocated beds, decided its criteria prevented her staying there and offered her a bed in a far- flung suburb. Blatchford wrote about this and charged the system was mismanaging beds. A few days later she wrote that health ministry staff had read her column, worked quickly to find a solution and decided her mother could stay in the home she wanted. The health minister of the day later phoned to ask if her mother was comfortable, which does not happen every day in hospitals. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television anchor and reporter Wendy Mesley described in a documentary her treatment for breast cancer. She was asked whether being a celebrity helped her get treatment and replied “If you’re a journalist, you can always open doors. So I may have had my surgery a week earlier, I’m sure.” There have been many indications Ontarians who know the right people to call have obtained quicker treatment in the health system. A doctor wrote to a Toronto paper after the flu queue-jumping and said the public must be naïve if it believes people with influence do not get precedence in queues. He asked “How long do you think hospital board members wait to see a specialist or get a non-urgent MRI? Not nearly as long as Joe the Plumber.” A former dean of the University of Toronto medical school said not long ago he commonly received calls from high-profile individuals, including academic colleagues and senior staff of the ministry of health, asking for help to obtain faster care. Some ironically were people who publicly opposed private delivery of health services on the ground it would create unequal access. A prominent surgeon said doctors often allow people to jump the queue, because they know them and not to make money. It still means some people who have friends in the right places are treated ahead of others who are just as needy and have been waiting longer. This is what a public health system is supposed to cure. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Every once in a while it becomes quite an attractive idea to me to take a break from testosterone and up the estrogen quotient in my life. This past weekend, a girlfriend and I spent a day doing girl things. We travelled to the city to shop, dine and wine, then stay overnight at a motel, where snuggled into our jammies, we enjoyed more wine, munchies, a chick flick and talking into the wee hours. When I had earlier told my man about this plan he was puzzled. The shopping he understood; Christmas is coming and it’s not like he was about to do this job. But I was only going a few miles. Why stay overnight, he wondered. My answer? I needed girl time, which he totally understood, of course. Much as I love being yin to his yang, there are moments when I talk about something, such as the menu for a special dinner, or how a situation made me feel, where he gets that odd look on his face and I know I’ve lost him. On the other side, of course, are those stories he shares where all I can say in response is “Huh?”. When we’re really young, those differences aren’t there. Little boys and girls play together quite comfortably, sharing toys while listening to each other’s chatter. Best friends come in any gender. Things start to change by school age, though. Feminists can argue this all they want, but as the mother of boys and girls I’m a believer. The trucks, Transformers and Ghostbusters (depending on the era) were as available to my daughters, as the Barbie, Cabbage Patch Kid and My Little Ponies were to the boys. But without fail, the noise, the rough play, the banging and smashing were guy things, while their sisters consistently found a gentler make believe. So, children at this age may have friends of the opposite sex, but it’s a relationship of numbered days. That phase in my childhood was one of neighbourhood buddies, boys and girls out together in the evenings for games of tag and chase. But girl times were becoming very much a part of social life. We giggled at pyjama parties, complained about our parents, shared our insecurities and fears. While boys were a reality of our world, they were aliens rough and tumbling around the periphery. With the teen years the boy part of the equation tilted and while my circle of gal pals was a tight one, guys had somehow become the centre. The roster changed with a certain regularity as couples hooked up and broke up. But generally we had begun the steps that would see yet another shift, towards the one and only. Most people marry their best friend, or would at least say they consider their spouse this way. Marriage is a partnership of business and intimacy. It can be compared to those tight friendships of youth in that deepest secrets and heartfelt feelings are shared. But let’s be honest. Even if your life mate is your soul mate, the reality is that on many levels men and women are quite different. I like to spend time with Mark because he is one of my primary interests in life and I like to think he feels the same way about me. He knows me better than anyone, enough to appreciate that sometimes it’s just nice for a woman to spend time with someone who understands why the commercial made her cry, who doesn’t just support her when she shares her insecurities, but gets them. Not to mention how nice it is to be with someone who actually knows how to change the toilet paper roll or watch television without the remote control in their hand. Powerful jump health queues Yin and Yang Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise.