Boys and girls

I was discussing the difference between boys and girls the other day with my wife and a friend when I remembered something from my childhood which perfectly illustrates the difference. When I was about twelve years old and my brother around nine, we were sitting in the dark of our parent's den, with the lights out, at twilight, watching television. As I remember, our parents and our sister were out of the house, running some errand. Frank and I were just laying on the floor, watching television. Among the three network channels, the two public broadcasting channels and the three UHF channels, there was not much to watch on a hot Summer day in July. As we flipped around the dial on the television, two of the following were on the UHF channels: bullfighting from Tijauna, Mexico, roller derby featuring Joanie Weston of the Bay City Bombers, a rerun of an old movie serial of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, in which Buck attempted to escape from the clutches of the Emporer Ming, and professional wrestling from some arena somewhere in the south. The channel dance lit on the professional wrestling, as Frank and I settled in to watch wrestling.

As we sat in the glow of the television, we suddenly noticed a rural beauty on the front row of the auditorium attempting to remove her brain with her finger through one of her nostrils. You can not imagine the fascination and drama instilled in those two pre-teen boys as we watched that young woman picking her nose. Absolutely riveting television. To this date, I can guarantee you that I could call my brother and ask him if he remembered the lady picking her nose on the front row of the wrestling arena and he would confirm in the positive. As a matter of fact, I called my brother after I thought about this and his response was, "Didn't she have some kind of beehive hairdo?"

Now, given the possibility of watching a lady picking her nose on television and some other source of amusement, my wife would just turn the television off. And she couldn't conceive of why two young boys could find so much fun in this show. But that is the difference between boys and girls. The girl was picking her nose. The boys were finding amusement in watching it.