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Why
Men Grill
In
case you’ve noticed your man (or someone else’s) behaving strangely these
past few weeks, let me explain what’s happening.
It’s
again outdoor grilling time. My
advice to any woman witnessing this phenomenon is to simply relax and let the
guy have his way.
Otherwise
you’ll end up back in the kitchen.
I
know. You’re going to complain
that the meat is undercooked, smells like Lea & Perrins (which, I might add,
contains anchovies) and tastes
like
scorched underbrush. And when you
attempt to check on the broiling progress, you can’t find the cooker for all
the smoke and flames.
Well,
all I can offer is that I’ve learned to eat around the edges of my hamburger
and I’ve taped the fire department’s phone number to my patio door.
Ladies,
it’s not ours to question this primal ritual that connects men to their
earliest caveman counterparts. Let’s
face it. Bonfires and fresh kill
have a
greater
history than, say, Viking and Albertson’s.
This
explains why a guy who’ll regard the kitchen stovetop as though it’s
something that might give him estrogen has no problem tackling a backyard
barbecue.
First, he’s genetically encoded to build fires.
And second, his reptilian brain tells him that, at least to Cavewoman,
the scent of crackling meat
over
an open flame is an aphrodisiac. In
The Paleolithic Period there were no dating services or Internet.
Caveman had to depend on the size of his smoke
spirals
and the waft of sizzling meats to lure a prospective partner. Or
to put this more directly, the bigger his blaze the better were his chances of
finding
“wooka-wooka”
that night.
So
don’t misinterpret your fellow’s intentions.
He’s not trying to burn you out of your home.
He’s just saying, “Hey, Baby, I’m ready for wooka-wooka!”
In
earlier times, cavewomen probably had a choice of fireside dinners to attend.
Before making a selection they no doubt scanned the horizon instead of
the
personal
ads. Our female ancestors reasoned
that large smoke plumes indicated a sizeable roast (or else another cheap blind
date trick). Hence, the guy
with
the biggest column generally won the girl.
Whole
industries have been launched around man’s inclination to continue this kind
of competition. Consequently,
retailers now bring us barbeque pits so
colossal
they require trailer chassis and smokers capable of cooking an entire herd.
When it comes to char-broiling, it seems everyone has climbed onto the
chuckwagon.
Any day now I fear I’ll be unable to enter Home Depot for the grill
display that’s consumed the remainder of the parking lot. (Though
my
absence
might make a lot of summer workers happy, it would be horrible for
shareholders.) My
husband is one of these barbecue warriors – but he
competes
only by degrees. His infrared Texas
Incinerator-Master (guys will buy anything that includes the word “master”)
reaches 1,600 Fahrenheit and will
sear
a filet mignon in two minutes. It
can also, I’ve discovered, melt plastic forks at four feet and eliminate
entire sets of wedding Tupperware.
I
do my best to stay away from our backyard beast (the grill, not my spouse).
That’s my man’s territory, and I don’t want to infringe.
Some sort of
alchemy
is happening there. A combination
of brawn and blaze is transmuting into . . . well . . . wooka-wooka.
And I figure if I can’t take the heat,
I
should stay in the kitchen.
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