was that there were two guns, the murder weapon and one that was never fired, and that the only witness, a woman, couldn’t tell the difference between the two. Plausible enough, my son thought, except that one was a revolver while the other was an automatic, and so the difference ought to have been immediately apparent to anyone. “Well, she was a woman,” I countered, “Guns aren’t important to women.”
“Dad! Anyone can tell the difference between a revolver and a gat!”
“Ah, maybe. Say, did you see your girlfriend today?”
“Yeah.”
“Notice what she was wearing?”
“Of course!”
“What color were her shoes?”
“Shoes?” he asked in a tone that indicated he shouldn’t even be expected to know.
I nodded and called his sister into the room. I asked her, “Hey, Bean-Girl, what’s the difference between a revolver and an automatic?”
“Uh — well they’re both guns, right?” When I nodded, she went on, “Does an automatic have more bullets?”
“Something like that,” I changed the subject, “See your friend DeeDee today?”
“I see her on the bus everyday.”
“What color were her shoes?”
“Black Converse high-tops with the white circle on the ankle, why?”
“Well, because Pod-Man knows the difference between an automatic and a revolver, but he doesn’t know what color shoes his girlfriend was wearing today.”
She shook her head, saying to Pod-Man before she left the room, “Guns are stupid; shoes are important.”
So I then told my son always to keep in mind a few lessons:
- People naturally think about and remember what is important to them.
- You need to put some effort into remembering the things that are not important to you because you won’t do it automatically.
- Different things are important to men and women , and you had better figure out what is important to the women in your life.
