Unsolicited Advice? Look No Further Than The Nearest Man

Once again, this week we revisit the tug-o-war between men and women. And what better place to do it in the summer than on the golf course?

Recently, my friend Rita was at the driving range, practicing her long irons. "I was minding my own business," she said. "I had my golf bag and my beer; I felt a beer would make me look more guy-like, don't you think?"

So Rita is out there hitting golf balls - like all of us, some straight, some veering off like our Saturn rockets fell off the pad in the 1960s - when suddenly, a small boy, maybe 10 or 11, walks up to her and says, "Keep your eye on the ball."

"Keep my eye on the ball," fumed Rita. "Like I'm a complete moron."

The kid wasn't the only one who offered Rita unsolicited advice. While Rita was practicing, a steady parade of people volunteered golf tips. And do you know what they all had in common? They were men.

"I don't know what it is about men that makes them think they can walk right up to you and give you advice," Rita said. "A woman would never invade your privacy that way." (And it's true. I have yet to see a woman stand by the loading bay of a moving van and direct the movers in and out of a house. Men do that all the time, even when it's not their house!)

That's it, no more

After five or six of these men, Rita could take no more. So, when some man who couldn't hit the ball out of his own shadow, a man with a swing that belonged in a sausage casing, said to Rita, "Excuse me, can I give you a tip?" Rita fired back, "No!"

"But I think you should know . . ."

"No!" Rita said.

"Listen, I can help you," the man persisted.

"No!"

"But . . ."

And Rita turned on him and glowered, "If you try one more time to give me a golf tip, I'll cleave your head with a 2-iron," thereby ending what had been a pleasant conversation. (Isn't that just like a woman to get hysterical?)

"Why do men always think they know more than women?" Rita asked me.

I, of course, immediately corrected the poor dear. "We don't think we know more than women. We know we know more than women."

This is why men are always so generous with free advice. For example, you'll see a couple at a restaurant, and the man will be a big fat slob who has to get lowered into his seat with pulleys. And the woman will order a hamburger and fries, and this guy who looks like a china hutch with feet will say disapprovingly, "You sure you need those fries, hon?"

Men feel it is their duty to give unsolicited, unwanted advice. I know a man who tells his wife how to stack plates in a dishwasher, like there is some sort of science to it. I myself lectured my daughter the other day on how to take out the garbage correctly: "Hold the bag from the bottom so it doesn't leak." Honestly, shouldn't it be enough that she took it out at all and I didn't have to?

My friend Tracee is an assistant sports editor at The Washington Post. She knows more about sports than I'll ever know even if I swallow the Baseball Encyclopedia. But every time a man calls the sports desk and she answers, she hears the man say, "I'm looking for the sports department," like there must be a mistake because a woman answered. What does he think he dialed, The Post's lingerie department?

A belief in infallibility

Not only do men give out unsolicited, unwanted advice, but we think this advice is a gift worth having. We feel this way because we were raised - by our mothers, I might add - to believe we're infallible. I am afraid to fly, I'm terrified of being in the air - if you saw me on an airplane, you would assume by my behavior that I had the emotional stability of a Jell-O mold. But I actually believe that if there were an emergency on board - say, the pilots got food poisoning and died - that I could land the plane. If there were a skilled woman flier on board, I would expect her to move aside while I flew the plane. She could, you know, get me a cup of coffee.

I told this to my friend Nancy, who has actually flown with me and has seen me cower like a Chihuahua on take-off. Nancy said, "If there were an emergency on board, you would have your head so deep in the vomit bag, you'd look like Mr. Potato Head."

Nevertheless, I believe I could fly the plane because of inborn male superiority.

And now, I would like to thank my friends Rita, Tracee and Nancy for helping me with this column, and I'd like to caution Nancy, who's fair-skinned, not to go out in the sun without a hat, and remind Tracee that you at least need a runner on first base with less than two outs to enforce the infield fly rule, and advise Rita to keep her weight on her front foot while hitting from a sand trap. And, since it's summer, if any of you need to know the best way to light charcoal, call me.

(Copyright 1995, Creators Syndicate Inc.)

Syndicated humor columnist Tony Kornheiser, who writes for The Washington Post, appears Sundays in the Scene section.