It's hard to learn unless you ask questions

Our family was sitting around the dinner table the other night having quality time and telling harvest stories.

I told the one about the first year we were married when we had a terrific wind one night. My husband was up and pacing, worried that the barley, due to come down in the morning, would be shelling out and how would he support his new wife and the offspring that was on the way. I suggested we take a flashlight and go look.

That way, I reasoned, we could either spend the night worrying about something concrete, or we could have a peaceful night knowing the barley was all right.

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My husband, and his friends, still think that one of my dumber suggestions. I and my friends think to this day it was a suggestion that made good sense. Ah, men. You gotta love them, even though they do think differently from women.

Every wife and every mother has known that for ever. Someone should do a study sometime on how far out of his way the average man will drive rather than stop and ask directions.

I once attended a course on the internet with a bunch of guys. I was the only one asking questions. At the end of the session, one of the fellas told me that my questions were good ones and elicited the information he wanted. I asked why he hadn’t stuck his hand up, and he told me he didn’t want to look stupid. If a recent article in the Globe and Mail is to be believed, the world of business has twigged onto the fact that men and women think differently.

“Women don’t pretend to know everything and aren’t afraid to ask when they’re unsure,” the article says. “Information equals power and men abhor visible signs of weakness in themselves. Ask a question and males will offer answers whether they know what they’re talking about or not.”

The article also says women don’t like shopping for cars “whose sticker prices are known to be opening bids in a mano-a-mano contest of wits and wills. … It’s flying blind and women find no particular thrill in flying blind.”

I guess that’s also why, after an all-women combine clinic, the instructor said he’d rather deal with women any day.

Men come, he said, and because they’re supposed to know how a combine works, they don’t ask questions.

Women, on the other hand, know they don’t know and aren’t expected to know, and they aren’t afraid to ask.

So who would you rather have driving your combine? Or buying it?