The biggest difference between men and women is their ability to track items around the house. When I was single, everything was right where it belonged. Mis-en-place is a French term I learned in restaurants for “everything in it's place” which implies that there is, in fact, a place for everything. Now that I'm all grown up and in a relationship, there still is a place for everything, although apparently that place is exactly where anything happens to be. Allow me to illustrate.

One evening, my girlfriend, Leeanne, asked me to run upstairs and grab the baby's bottle so she could wash it. The request was simple enough, and quite clear. However, when I got upstairs, I found that it wasn't in his crib, or even in our bed where she sometimes feeds him. Hmm. Bathroom? Floor? Where on Earth would that bottle be? I could have asked her where it was, but I stalled, postponing the inevitable moment when she would realize that I still hadn't found the bottle, because we all know that men also won't ask for directions to anything, even when it's in their own house. After all, “upstairs” is in the house, too, and I found that on my own. Altogether too quickly, she called up, “What's taking so long?” I could think of only response that would legitimately explain why the bottle wasn't where it should have been: “It isn't up here!” She replied, “Did you look in the closet?” Of course. I always feed the baby in the closet, like all the other normal people on this great ball of mud. It makes perfect sense. “Honey, I set it in there when the baby spit up on himself while he was eating because I had to change his clothes. Why wouldn't you think to look in there?” Because of testosterone.

I blame it on testosterone to make me look where something should be, and estrogen to make her look where something might be. That explains why my kids, who don't have as much of either as we do refuse to look for anything anywhere. Our oldest daughter, Nicki, emptied her toothpaste one night, and asked if she could use our toothpaste until we got her another tube. Of course we want her to keep her pearly whites pearly and white, so she ran upstairs to get it. She hollered down, “Where is it?” Surely she couldn't have even reached the top stair yet; I heard her thump-thumping up the case. “Did you try the medicine cabinet?” I was feeling quite smug at this point, positive that the toothpaste would be right where I left it, in its home with the cap pointing to the right and the bottom of the tube squashed flat instead of the middle. But it wasn't. In fact, it wasn't even on the back of the incredibly small pedestal sink where two of the smaller children like to hide it from me. It must be obvious, even to young girls, that men can't find anything that's out of place, because Nicki doesn't even wait long anymore before giving up on me. “Maybe I should ask Momma.” Not so fast, kiddo. I threw a Hail-Mary. “Did you check the closet? Maybe someone was brushing her teeth in there.” No luck. We eventually found it in the bedroom, where one of the children had brought it to Mom, asking to brush her teeth. But it's not just toothpaste and baby bottles.

This can be anything from pots and pans to pencils, to brooms and dustpans. No matter what I am looking for, it will not be where I would put it, and she knows exactly where it went, even if she didn't help it get there. I still get to put whatever I want wherever I think it belongs as long as it's in the basement and nobody else uses it, and I've since learned to just embrace my fate as a man and realize that I'll never be able to find anything in the rest of the house ever again, so I don't even try anymore. Fortunately, nobody has noticed. Either that or they have and I'm just ignoring them, which, I'm pretty sure, is the second biggest difference between men and women.