Why we desperately need to make use of women’s intelligence

Men just aren’t that smart

By Moristotle

Take a perhaps typical man. He turns the key to lock his garden shed’s sliding glass door, and then tries to turn the key back 180° to extract it from the lock. It won’t budge. He jiggles it. He pushes it in the tiny fraction of an inch it will go and tries again. Still the key won’t move. Shit!
    Okay. He gives up for now; he’ll think about it. Maybe the key needs to cool off, or warm up.
    He doesn’t mention to his wife that they’re locked out of the shed – why bother her with it now, he’ll think of something?
    The next day he jiggles the key some more, but nothing has changed. The key won’t budge.
    What else can he try? He thinks of the key center at Lowe’s; maybe one of the men who manage it will have an idea. He might go over there in the morning. He needs to get another carabiner for his keys anyway. Unlike Home Depot and Walmart, Lowe’s has them in stainless steel.
    But what if they can’t suggest anything? He guesses he could use one of those burglar’s tools to cut a round section from the glass adjacent to the lever inside, so he could reach through and....But would the lever move with the key in the position it’s frozen in? He doesn’t know. Besides, where’s he going to get one of those tools?
    Or what about one of the windows on either side of the door? Breaking or removing one of those would be less invasive. The one on the left would work; he could get a ladder and crawl through...The one on the right is sort of blocked by the shelves he installed.
    Or the back door, which is wood and swings out. True, he can remove the padlock from the outside, but what about those sliding bolts on the inside? He’s sure he engaged them from the inside after installing the padlock and going around to get inside through the sliding glass door. Maybe he could jiggle the wood door from the outside and get the top bolt to slide down...if he didn’t snap the holder into place after engaging the bolt – he’s pretty sure he did...or maybe jiggling the door would unsnap it? But what about the bottom bolt – it sure as heck isn’t going to fall up. Shit!

Okay, the next day comes, and he’ll go talk with the key guys at Lowe’s. He’ll tell his wife now, why he’s going.
    “Hon, we’re locked out of the shed. I can’t turn the key back to get it out. It’s just frozen there.”
    She says, “Have you sprayed lubricant into the lock?”
    Uh, no, he hasn’t tried that, hasn’t even thought of it.
    “Good idea! I’ll try that. Do you think I should use liquid lubricant, or graphite?”
    She says it might not matter, but liquid somehow seems more likely than little graphite particles. So, in a few minutes he’s got their spray canister of silicone lubricant in hand and is standing at the key. He couldn’t find the little yellow tube for directing the spray to a precise spot, so he positions the canister as close to the lock as possible and gives it a squirt.
    And after jiggling the key for less than two seconds, it turns smoothly, and he keeps turning it to the unlock position.
    Excited and grateful, he rushes into the house to tell his wife it worked!

Copyright © 2018 by Moristotle