Driving to pick up my son from a friend's house this afternoon, I saw a group of men gathered in a yard. These men had fashioned a couple of small ramps out of plywood and some other odds and ends. The ramps were facing each other. At the time I was driving by, the men appeared to be standing around discussing how to utilize their creations.

I saw this and I was reminded that wherever two or more are gathered... there's bound to be trouble.

Men, especially when gathered in groups of two or more, have an almost childlike ability to create chaos. I was reminded of this universal truth because each of the men in the group I witnessed today had assumed his own version of the man stance. The man stance is a physical positioning of the body a man assumes that he apparently thinks makes him look more intelligent, better looking, or like an important contributor to the task at hand. Although the man stance varies according to the individual man, there's no doubt that it signals impending doom.

Any woman who has witnessed such a gathering of men can attest to the fact that they should never be allowed to gather in groups to do man stuff. When they do, someone is bound to get hurt or something is going to get broken. Why is it that during this mine-is-bigger-than-yours contest, men are immediately drained of any sense that they may have had before coming into contact with another man/men? It's like there is some sort of inverse correlation between the amount of testosterone in any given area and the amount of intelligence being employed.

So, back to the group of men gathered in the yard.

I imagined that one of those men was going to be brainless enough to ride those ramps in some manner that was likely to prove disastrous. I had a friend, years ago, who, whenever he said the words "watch this" he ended up in the hospital. The words "watch this" were only uttered in the presence of other men and they always preceded his doing something completely stupid like back flips off a springboard (During the back flip incident, my friend was showing off for some cheerleader friends at a local university). Add alcohol to the man-stuff-and-stance soup and the inverse correlation I've already mentioned becomes increasingly proportionate to the amount of alcohol that has already been ingested.

I'll bet at least one testosterone Tarzan in that yard got hurt and I'll bet a group of wives and girlfriends are sitting around at this very moment shaking their heads and thinking "he/they did what?!"

Sigh. I look at my son and wonder if he will ever really mature past his current age of ten.