Genetics and burned toast

I burned breakfast toast. My lack of concentration was the fault of my hunter-gatherer waybacks.

Here’s how it happened:

I put the oven on “Broil” and two pieces of (not real) buttered whole wheat bread on the top rack. (Cylla used to say my method of making toast got the oven messy, what with the crumbs dropping down and all. She makes toast by setting oven temperature at 350 and then putting bread on a cookie sheet and the sheet in the oven. I figure my method is quicker and uses less electricity, even after using the “Clean Oven” setting once a month … When I remember.)

I went to the laundry room to see if the washer still contained (not my) clothes. It did not. So, I put in soap and started the water running. Just about the time I would have begun adding clothes, I remembered: Toast.

Well, shucks, I said. I went back to the kitchen just as the first smoke began seeping from the oven door and just as the smoke alarm went off. “Weeeeeeeee” at a pitch high enough the dogs came to see what the man had done this time.

The toast was black. Like a tire black. After taking the burnt offering from the oven, I turned on the stove ventilator and then opened two windows. Air began coming in from the outside, so I upped the thermostat to get air blowing in the opposite direction. All this time, the smoke alarm continued “Weeeeeeeeee!”

I went back to the laundry room and put clothes in the washer and then returned to the kitchen and (not real) buttered two more pieces of bread and stood beside the stove and turned the toast at the proper time.

I mentioned all that to Cylla. She said, “I took my clothes out of the laundry last night.”

I said, “I didn’t know.”

She said, “I walked right past you. I guess you were ignoring me.”

“No,” I said, “I wasn’t ignoring you. I was probably watching TV, and my single-focus male mind did not hear or see anything else.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“Really,” I said. “A man has a single-focus mind. Leave cave, kill caribou. Or buffalo.”

The difference between men and women is not the Mars-Venus thing, but hunter vs. cave keeper. Buying vs. shopping.

Think about it. A group of men leaves the cave to shoot some food. The men go to a place where they’ve found food animals before. The group uses strategy and tactics and kills a food animal. The group does all the butchering and cutting up and takes the food back to the cave.

If women had been the primary hunters, we might not be here. Someone in the women’s group would have said, “We went to the north valley last time. Let’s see what’s in the south valley.” And the other women would have said, “Cool,” or something similar.

In the south valley, maybe the women spotted a food animal. But before the launching of the spears, one woman would have said, “That’s a food animal, but maybe we can find a bigger one farther on. Besides, that hide doesn’t go with the décor of the cave.” And the other women would say, “Cool.”

It’s single focus vs. multi-tasking. Man hunts. Woman keeps the cave clean, makes sure no little cave people fall in the fire, keeps the water skins full, sweeps out the place now and then, maybe picks some yellow flowers for certain niches in the rock.

Simple.

Maybe I should buy a toaster.