Ho Ho Backhoe !

As the Holiday season is upon us many a wife and husband start to become perplexed as they try to find the perfect gift. Many of my male friends and I have actually come to the same conclusion about what we would consider the perfect gift. Even moments ago I just had a conversation regarding this perfect gift.  The unfortunate part is that men and women tend to see the world differently and what a man might consider just perfect a woman may consider impractical, what a man might consider most practical and useful a woman may consider ridiculous. While this perfect gift exists it is the rare man that has ever had his wife get him one for Christmas or his birthday or another important special occasion. Yes men I do speak of the Backhoe. I have mentioned to my wife on more than one occasion that I need a backhoe.  The first question my wife asks is usually why? Well I may not be sure exactly what I might need it for but I feel the need for a backhoe. I am certain that many an outdoor job around my property would be made much easier with a backhoe. I could dig ponds, dig a hole for roasting Meat, move those piles of snow. I really could come up with a lot of things I could do. I am convinced that it would be the best gift ever. As a reader you have probably already guessed that I have not yet received this perfect gift. I do suppose that there are lots of gifts that we men feel we need that our significant others just shake their heads at. I think that specialty tools fall into that category.

Men and women are different for sure in so many ways. In the clinical setting I am often reminded of how the genders differ. I watch as my older patients are not able to drive and have their licence taken away, men seem to take this much harder than women as they consider this a part of their manhood or independence, while women tend to take these things in stride. For a man to accept that he has a loss of hearing can sometimes be difficult. This difficulty might be one that women face as well but men sometimes seem to struggle more with even wanting to know what their hearing really is. Men want to be able to fix things and seem to have a hard time dealing with the things that they can't fix themselves. I have recently seen this happen with one of my patients, a young father who had his child diagnosed with a hearing loss. While this family was very practical in accepting the loss and was extremely proactive in getting amplification on this infant, Dad was still trying to find a fix for it. In this case he was hopeful that an alternate medical approach would work although this was an impossibility. In the end the Father came to terms with the realities they were facing and took the challenge head on.

Yes we men want to fix things, dig holes, be the masters of our own destiny but sometimes it is better to accept the practicalities of life and face them head on. Maybe I do not really need a Backhoe after all.