Okay. Before you forget it, circle your current thought:

1) I've already stopped reading.
2) Who are these two morons?
3) I'm curious what will happen next.
4) They should totally try this with a frog. It works.

Now please add up your score. If it's 2 or lower there's a strong likelihood
that you have ovaries. You should talk to your doctor to be sure. Anyway
I realize it sounds sexist to suggest that one's gender can be accurately
predicted by the results of this test. Instead I'll just say that any woman
who circled answer 3 or 4 should call me soon because I happen to know you
are one foxy chick.

Unfortunately my daughters all flunk this test. Throwing a ball with them is
an exercise in futility--they get bored within minutes and start looking
for four leaf clovers, or describing an especially tedious dream they had
the night before, or whatever, all while holding on to the ball. Seriously,
you cannot hold on to the ball. Guys feel actual physical discomfort when
they don't get the ball back. It's like being abandoned on a seesaw.

I don't know why boys crave mindless, repetitive physical activity but we
do. It's soothing to us. Spiritually cleansing. It's the only time we have
left to really ponder the universe. I've come up with some of my best ideas
while mowing my lawn, for example. Yesterday as I paced back and forth across
my front yard I was thinking about how Cohasset's children get to school. As
you know each student is individually chauffeured to either Osgood, Deer
Hill or the Middle/High School by car, truck, mini-van, humvee, or in some
cases Harrier Jump Jet. This seems very inefficient to me in terms of fuel
and traffic at school entrances. What we need is a new kind of vehicle that
can hold many children from different families, all at the same time. This
"student-moving contraption" would drive down the main roads in town and
stop periodically at what I call "student-moving contraption stops," picking
up groups of children and transporting them to their destination. I haven't
thought much about the color yet but I'm leaning toward chrome.

There's definitely something about pushing a lawn mower that helps spark
this kind of breakthrough thinking. Last August as I was mowing I came up
with a great idea for a short film about a guy who's mowing his lawn, and
all kinds of crazy things happen. He accidentally runs over a tennis ball,
and he shreds a Converse sneaker to ribbons, and he nearly takes out a bunch
of tulips because his mind is wandering a bit, but he swerves around them just
in time. The film ends when one of his daughters tries to get his attention by
coming up behind him and yelling at the top of her lungs, and he has a massive
coronary. She does this despite having been specifically told numerous times
to simply go where he can see her and wave her arms if she needs to talk to
him, and not to scare the Christ out of him every time. So it has a rather
tragic ending but teaches an important lesson, and I would never have dreamt
it up if I hadn't been mowing my lawn. It really gets your imagination going.

A man's brain is not designed to stay in gear all day long. At some point we
have to put it in neutral and play hacky sack. If we don't do this our minds
will slip out of gear unexpectedly and we'll offer to be waterboarded for
charity or something. Meanwhile women's brains seem to be constantly going full
tilt and they scare away all the fish. I wish men and women could find a way
to work and live together peacefully and love one another despite these
differences but obviously that hasn't happened. I'll get to work on a solution
next time I'm playing my bongo drums.

John Lengyel lives in Cohasset. He also feels actual physical discomfort
when told that another daughter needs braces.