by Lori Bebko

Created on: March 07, 2007   Last Updated: April 23, 2007

A touch, a caress....the drifting of a finger across one's cheek. These are things we, as women, take cues from in our relationships. But do men really understand that?

Today, the husband and I were on our way up to the high school to pick my youngest spawn up and I was just people-watching. You see many strange people and activities when you head up to the high school. One thing I have noticed, much to my dismay, is that there are a lot of girls walking around, wearing bandanas fashioned into thick headbands around their heads. Their hair sticks up in a high ponytail atop their heads, making them appear to have just come from aerobics class somewhere back in 1982. I do not know why this has become popular, nor do I know why anyone would want to look like that. Whenever I see this hairstyle, I want to throw them a pair of leg warmers and tell them to get it right, dammit.

I was also watching the random young couples walking hand-in-hand and the ones with their arms around each other....you know, the acceptable PDAs. One couple was walking down the street, and the boy had his arm clamped most protectively around his girlfriend's waist, while she walked along, biting her nails or something. They looked like they might be 14-15 years old, and I just thought to myself, does that kid really want to have his arm around that girl, or is he doing it just because he's expected to? She looked like she couldn't care less, and she certainly wasn't hanging onto him in the same way. I almost asked the husband about this......where do boys learn the proper displays of affection? Do they do it out of a need to be close to the girl they're dating, or do they do it merely because it's what they know girls like? Do they feel anything at all when they're doing it (aside from the usual feelings of lust) or does it just become a reflex?

I wonder this because we read so many articles these days about how men are wired so differently from women. Men don't "get" those subtle clues we put out there for them; they can't see "signs"; they don't feel emotions as intensely as women. How many times have I gotten an email from a guy friend in which it lists all the differences between men and women? The list pertaining to chicks is long, detailed, very intense. The list pertaining to men says something like "Ugg" or "I want to get laid". How many times has that photograph of how many switches we women have (apparently 100 or so) as opposed to how many a man has (1...ON or OFF) circulated in

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