Traveling can bring as much joy as it can inconvenience and frustration, but never in a million years would one expect it to provide answers to some of life’s most puzzling concepts. Little did I know that an unexpected flight delay would provide insight to one of life’s most enduring befuddlements: The workings of the post-pubescent male mind.
HOW IT STARTED
The trip began as innocuously as any other, but soon shifted to a shudder-worthy levels of annoyance. Unable to find my record in the system (even though I had a printed record of all pertinent flight information) three different airline representatives shuttled me among them as they desperately attempted to locate my ticket. Meanwhile, the clock ominously ticked away, as if counting down minutes to doomsday. Alas, I didn’t make it… I arrived at my gate just as the plane began to pull away.
FINDING A SOLUTION
With luggage on the plane, yet my physical body still in the terminal, I began the hour-long process of finding a human airline attendant to help me figure out the situation. Seventy-two minutes, eight back-and-forth gate changes, two disinterested airline attendants, an information booth concierge and one phone attendant later, I was trying not to explode in anger. “There’s nothing we can do Miss Luckutt,” they chirped with disheartening indifference, “That is the last flight this evening, the next one leaves at 6 a.m.” A deep breath, some calm reasoning and an enlightened supervisor later, we’d found an alternative (though exhaustion-inducing) itinerary flying West to Salt Lake City and then a red-eye flight back East to arrive at my destination.
WORKINGS OF THE MALE MIND
Indeed the heavens were working in my favor, as I bumped into some of the nicest people during a more-than-seven-hour layover in Salt Lake City–the most intriguing of which was a recently divorced gentleman in his late thirties. A jovial, and self-described, “superficial,” chap, he provided humor, laughter and dare-I-say “insight” to the way a man’s mind works.
From what the newly single thirty-something male looks for in a woman: “Hot. Hot enough to bring around my ex-, because I’ve got to show her up,” he warned. To what thirty-something women look for in men: You guessed it, the age-old story of coveting money, power and status. To why men in their forties date women in their twenties – if you can believe it, he actually called women over 40 “marsupials.” I looked at him incredulously, asking, “what, they have tails?” To which I never would have guessed the answer: “They have pouches big enough to carry a kangaroo,” he guffawed.
He went on to say that he, and all of his friends discuss how much women let themselves “go,” once they “land a man.” That, in their thirties, they no longer have the drive to look pleasing to the opposite sex, and that any woman to whom a gym is a foreign land need not apply for a relationship with him. Ouch. On and on… he gave me his, and his friends’, opinions on male-female relations. Now, you may be wondering why I continued this discussion with such a cad – but believe it or not, I found him quite funny and his comments fairly harmless. You see, I don’t believe he actually believed the crass assessments he espoused. In actuality, it was quite clear his divorce had left a deep and raw wound from which he still had to heal.
Can I tell you he provided the bombshell answers to the plethora of burning questions about the workings of the male psyche? Not necessarily. I can say however, it was refreshing to learn that, some men at least, spend as much time thinking about, obsessing, discussing, questioning and being confused about women’s actions as women do men’s. That, and that alone, was worth the 24 hour bleary-eyed trip to get to a city that’s a mere three and a half hours from Denver. And allowed me to make friends with someone who, claims to have all the answers, but more than anything, reminded me that we’re all human, and we’re all doing our best to figure out life.
Doni Luckutt is a lifestyle expert who believes by enhancing interpersonal connection, we can stop simply living, and become Simply Alive! If you have a suggestion on what brings you to life, connect with her on Twitter @SimplyAlive, via e-mail Doni@SimplyAliveWorld.com or on her blog:
