I’ll laugh at it, but this is Jay’s story. There is a satirical website on the Internet called The Babylon Bee, whose mission is a very unusual mix of Christianity and general right wing ideology, mixed in with normal life events. So it’s not for everyone, but sometimes it is really funny.
I check it sometimes, because on occasion it is extremely funny, and an article they just published, titled Man Confers with Wife over Name of Person They Met 15 seconds ago is a classic normal life event for me.
Basically, the husband meets a new woman, a friend of his wife’s, and immediately forgets her name (Michelle), while the new lady, who has just met him, remembers virtually everything about him, including his name and the ages of his kids. His wife whispers to him the new lady’s name, which was Michelle, but then, at the end, when they are leaving, he screws it up anyway and calls her Sarah instead of Michelle.
Why this is funny is because it’s so true. Women do tend to remember names, far better than men, at least in my house. I could have met someone ten times, and I’ll still have no idea what their name is. Jen, on the contrary, would remember the name of the person who pumped gas for us in Colorado ten years ago.
What I liked about this story is that it’s not just me, and it’s not age related. I could never remember the names of people even when I was still working (and everyone knew me), despite working with some of them for years.
So why is the ability to remember details so much stronger in women than men? I think it’s due to evolution, when our distant relatives were all hunters or gatherers. When we were living in caves, it was the women who gathered the food from plants, while the men hunted.
When you are hunting deer, it’s not so important where you got the last deer, because the deer herds moved around, and in fact probably left the place where the last deer had been killed. But, if you were out gathering berries or edible plants, you needed to remember where they were, because they would most likely still be there, the next year. Apple trees don’t move much, but you have to remember where they are, so if men were in charge of gathering apples, they’d still be looking for the tree, and maybe would return with acorns.
This is a pretty funny, and somewhat related Saturday Night Live skit that Jen has watched too many times.
