I’m sure you must have read or at least heard about a recent study proving that men and women spend approximately the same amount of time talking. As it turns out, according to this study, women and men speak roughly the same amount of words per day. For those who believed that women are the big talkers, they are wrong.

A state university did this study, so in all likelihood the federal government funded it, which means you and I paid for it with our tax dollars. Veterans hospitals are being defunded, but I’m willing to bet that no one even batted an eye to cough up a high dollar grant to find out something that most intelligent people all ready knew.

I’d also be willing to bet that the idea of doing the study in the first place was the brainstorm of a man. Either because he thought his wife talked too much and he wanted to prove that excess talking was a woman thing, which of course he didn’t prove, or because of the very fact he is a man and men do weird things.

I’m sorry guys, but it’s true and I don’t think a study is needed to prove it.

My son-in-law is a good example of the weirdness of men. Jay recently had a birthday and he only wanted one thing: an iPod. His wife and children each have an iPod and he didn’t want to be left out. That’s understandable, but being a man, he didn’t want just any iPod like everyone else; oh no, he just had to have a video iPod.

Because he’s really a nice guy, a great husband to my daughter and wonderful dad to my grandsons, I willingly chipped in my share to help my daughter get the “must have” video iPod for his birthday.

Jay was very happy with the gift. So happy that he promptly started to download a movie off of an Internet site onto his birthday present. There is nothing weird about that and I’ll give him credit for perseverance because with a dial-up Internet connection, it took five days to complete the download.

Here’s where it gets weird. He spent five days downloading a movie that he already has on DVD. Not to mention the fact that he has a giant television to watch the movie on. I mean the television takes up the better part of one whole wall. And he’s very excited that he can now watch a movie he already owns on a darn 2-inch screen. I don’t care what you say, that’s downright weird.

Just so you don’t think I am one of those mother-in-laws who think her daughter married beneath her, I have previously stated what a good guy Jay is and I love him dearly and think he’s wonderful, but he definitely is weird.

And my husband is weird, too. During the winter months if the temperature in our bedroom drops below 72 degrees, Henry just has to have another blanket added to the bed. Even if it’s fairly warm in our bedroom if it’s below zero outside Henry will go for the extra blanket every time. I concede the fact that Henry is an older man and older people easily get cold, nothing weird about that.

However, once warmer weather comes and we put the air conditioner in the bedroom window Henry sets it for 65 degrees and runs it every single night no matter what the temperature may be outside. There have been some summer nights that have dipped quite low and it was so cold in the bedroom that I put my long johns on, but the darn air conditioner was still turned on.

When fall arrives and the air conditioner is put away for the winter an extra blanket is going to go on that darn bed no matter what. I call that pretty weird.

I know that’s only two examples of two men, but there just isn’t enough space in this column to expand on this subject. I could, in fact, write a book on how weird men are. If I could get my hands on some taxpayers’ federal dollars I could even do a study on the weirdness of men. Maybe I could even do the study as a video documentary and Jay could spend five days downloading it onto his darn video iPod. Yes, I could do all of that, but it would be just too gosh darn weird and the way I see it weirdness is strictly a man thing.