Storms Are Reliable Barometers on Differences Between the Sexes

Editor’s Note: Tony Kornheiser is on vacation. This column first ran in July 1998.

Once again, we return to the fault line between men and women. Today’s topic: the terrible summer thunderstorm.

Surely you have been in an office setting when a thunderstorm bears down. Women stay calm. They remain in their seats and continue working. They are nesters. What happens outside does not concern them--unless, of course, it is a sale on Manolo Blahnik stilettos.

Men salivate at barometric changes. We rush to the windows, pressing our snouts against them like basset hounds to see lightning. Scratch any man, and an inch down you find Al Roker.

I was at home last week when the sky suddenly turned the color of road tar. The women in the house were oblivious. (Later, a woman said, “If I cared about what happened outside, I would live in a carport.”)

Instinctively, I switched on the Weather Channel, where I learned we were under a Severe Weather Advisory. Yes! A violent thunderstorm with 70-mph wind gusts and hail the size of eggplants was around the corner, and it would be here in 10 seconds. I read the advisory aloud, like a World War II air-raid warden: “Stay inside and away from windows.”

The women in the house did just that. I did what any man would do: I walked outside onto the porch, and brought my faithful, albeit whimpering, dog with me. “Stand by my side, Maggie, and together we will face the apocalypse,” I said.

“Are you crazy?” my wife called to me. I turned to face her--a fortunate move, I must say, because at that very moment a gust of wind blew one of the hanging flower pots off its hook, and it hurtled past me at 90 mph. That was enough for Maggie, who began scratching wildly at the door to go in.

I stood in the fury--my back resting on a plate glass window, mind you, so a sudden blast of wind could shatter the glass and slice me like shaved ham--as rain came down sideways and thunder boomed and the wind snapped limbs off trees. I felt like Ahab lashed to the mast. I was alive!

What can I tell you? It started with the caveman, this primal urge to go out in a storm and become a human lightning rod. My friend Tracee grew up in Kansas, where tornadoes are common. “My dad made my mom and me go to the storm cellar. Then he got in the van and started driving around,” she shrugged. My friend Monte, from North Carolina, said in summer storms his dad enjoyed driving around and splashing through huge puddles. Men can sit for hours and watch video of a Force 5 hurricane, especially when it slashes into a beachside house, crumbles it and washes it away. Ha! Take that, Mister Rich Guy Summer Home! You know what else is great? Massive ice storms that cause cars to spin around wildly on the interstate and slam into other cars. .

We were lucky. We never lost power in the storm last week.

The sudden loss of electrical power is another point on the fault line between men and women.

In a blackout, women turn totally shrewish about refrigeration. They insist nobody open the refrigerator or freezer, for fear all the food will melt and spoil.

What women don’t realize is that men are hoping the meat defrosts. This gives men a chance to do what they love best: set fire to big hunks of animal flesh. It satisfies our need to incinerate things in a postwar world.

Every woman I know has the same reaction to the loss of electrical power: They want to go to an air-conditioned bar and drink martinis until power is restored.

Women don’t want to be dependent on candles. They don’t like it when the dishwasher and the washing machine don’t work. They don’t like it when their kids are yammering because the cable doesn’t work. Plus, women hate the jungle-like heat and humidity, because it makes them sweaty. Men see power outages as an opportunity to get lucky. The candles, the clamminess: There are fewer clothes to take off and lights to dim, and you’re already sweaty, so let’s rock ‘n’ roll. So maybe this explains the whole primal appeal of a raging thunderstorm. It plays to a man’s strengths: seduction and the ability to barbecue spoiled meat.