I was having a conversation with someone who left her ATM card in the machine. That immediately made me think of my post here where I went to a gas station and paid, then proceeded to leave without pumping any gas. So, being the internet attention whore that I am, I sent her the link to my post. She replied by saying “Is that a wedding ring on your finger?†(I’d added pictures from the post I’d found on the web for illustrative purposes, none of which were me)
Boom.
The idea hit me: I would never have noticed that. If I’d looked at that picture ten thousand times, I would never have seen that there was a wedding ring, but I think that nearly every woman would have. That made me think: there are several things that women notice that men do not.
When we see a girl, we notice several things subconsciously, and a wedding ring is not one of them. After our conscious mind assesses the situation, we may then remind ourselves to actually LOOK for the ring. So it’s just not an innate process. It’s something we get to after information gathering.
With women, it seems like that’s part of the immediate assessment. And I think there are other things like this that are immediately noticed by one sex, but not by the other.
I’ve done a very scientific poll to find these things that vary by gender (I sent a mass email to a group of friends). Here’s what I’ve collected so far. Please add yours:
Men Notice:
- --construction sites….guys always want to peer in and see what’s ‘goin on’
- –the score of whatever game is on as they walk by a bar w/ a tv……not exclusively guys though, Boston is a town where many women do this, but people outside Boston read your blog
- –a cool car driving by
- –what’s on sale in a Best Buy, etc…
- –where to get steak at the best price
- –how much gas is left in the grill / how much charcoal & fluid is left…..guys don’t even need to go check, they just know.
- Dangerous people not to mouth off to. Chicks tend to just say what they’re going to say and don’t think they’re going to get slapped silly. And guess who’s left holding the bag.
Women Notice:
- Curtains- I don’t know if I’ve ever noticed a single curtain.
- Wedding rings
- Other women that they think are prettier- Sometimes followed by the classic deathtrap “Do you think she’s prettier than me?” If you ever get that question, run. Don’t look back. Just start a new life in a new city. Trust me.
- non-matching socks
- when we wear the same pants three days in a row- An excellent one, sir.
- How a room is decorated- I totally agree with this. If someone asked “Don’t you like what they’ve done to the living room?” The answer is always “Yes,” but I will not have committed anything to memory.
So please, pile on the comments.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
THE SOCKS. My co-worker has noticed (and since stopped pointing out b/c it happens so frequently) that since my daughter was born, I haven’t worn matching socks.
I just checked. They don’t match.
But are both clean.
Reminds me of Steven Wright: I was talking to a beautiful blonde Chinese girl who said “you’re wearing two different colored socks.” I said “Yes, but to me they’re the same because I go by thickness.”
Now I get what you mean by “care to comment?”. I’m retarded.
But women notice when things are clean or dirty. I let a male guest use my bathroom recently without thinking that it was probably messy, and I apologized to him when returned. He was like “what are you talking about?”
ALthough to be fair, some guys are total neat freaks and would indeed notice my wet towels on the ground!
Yeah, but to be fair to that guy, and to that conversation, which is repeated between any given male and female (who are not intimate) up to 1,322,566,211.2 times per day in the U.S., the gulf between what a girl would consider a “dirty bathroom” and what a guy would consider dirty is well-nigh unmeasurable.
There’s a couple of hairs in the sink, the soap has some guck on the bottom and there’s dried toothpaste on the mirror. HORROR! To me that’s a clean bathroom. Few hairs on the toilet? Didn’t notice ‘em. Bathmat is a little matted? Who saw it. Not me.
I can say I have seen some straight up filthy bathrooms, though, and thought to myself “Jeebus. Even *I* think this is pretty nasty. How does this guy get a chick to not crawl out the window in horror?”