Whenever you go to the doctor and complain about pain, they ask you to rate how bad the pain is on a scale from 1 to 10. This is largely due to the fact that there is no way to objectively measure the pain (#5 in the linked article covers this one). I don't know enough of the science behind it, but I imagine that everyone's body reacts differently to stimulus (different muscles, different chemical responses, different everything, really). Worse yet, everyone's pain tolerance is different, often wildly so. Keep that last part in mind, it's going to be important in a little bit.
A while ago, I was talking to the Mild Ex about some of the folks she works with, and she was joking about how guys are all wusses. None of the guys wanted anything to do with needles and shots, apparently. She went down the list, and all of them refused. The very first woman she asked, however, happily agreed. Translation: guys are wusses.
As it turns out, I don't necessarily disagree. Based on what I understand of the process, that whole childbirth thing is a doozy. No guy I know would handle that kind of pain very well. Sure, we're taught to be stoic and to shrug off little aches and pains, but our pain tolerance is only so high. We just don't do very well on the high end of the pain scale. Or, as someone once famously said, "I don't know why they tell guys to grow a pair. Those things are sensitive and weak. They should tell them to grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding."
The flip side of that, of course, is that us guys shrug off a lot of little things. I remember rolling my ankle and stubbing my fingers roughly a bajillion times playing basketball as a kid. A bunch of us did; it was just part of the game. We didn't talk about it much, though. You'd incur a minor injury, try to walk it off a little bit or shake it off, and then continue playing as if nothing had happened. You knew someone had actually hurt themselves if they actually complained about it. I know a bunch of my female friends marveled at why we'd put ourselves through that (it was fun). So, despite our poor showing at the high end of the pain scale, guys seem to do better at the low end of the scale.
All of this leads me to propose my pain scale translation for guys theory. It's a little bit like the "rule of three" in the old American Pie movies. Whenever a guy gives you a number on the pain scale, that's not the actual number. Instead, you have to realize that the guy pain scale really only goes from what would objectively be a 2 to a 5. Anything above a 5 is "ow ow ow ow" to us anyway, so asking for a number above there is a little bit like asking us to guess the distance from here to Jupiter. The scale is so large that we have no good way of estimating a value. Similarly, anything below a 2 isn't something that we recognize as pain. That's more like "huh, that's annoying."
So if you're asking a guy to give you a number on the pain scale, you're realistically asking him to tell you where on the scale between 2 and 5 he lies. In short, our scale is compressed. So, whatever number the guy tells you, divide it by 3, and then add 2 to it. That's the actual number on the pain scale that corresponds to what he's feeling. Let's do a little quick math: if a guy tells you that he's feeling a 10 on the pain scale, that actually corresponds to a 5.33 (2 + 10/3). Since both numbers fall into "ow ow ow" territory anyway, that checks out. On the low side, say that a guy tells you that he's feeling a 1 on the pain scale. That works out to a 2.33 (2 + 1/3), which is just barely painful enough for a guy to mention it in the first place. Interestingly enough, a 3 is 3 no matter what (2 + 3/3 = 3), so you might even get a "true" number by accident using this scale.
All in all, the logic seems to check out. My number translation theory can generate a reasonable response on both the low end and the high end, and even a number that matches up with what the guy actually says under the right circumstances. Sounds right to me.
A while ago, I was talking to the Mild Ex about some of the folks she works with, and she was joking about how guys are all wusses. None of the guys wanted anything to do with needles and shots, apparently. She went down the list, and all of them refused. The very first woman she asked, however, happily agreed. Translation: guys are wusses.
As it turns out, I don't necessarily disagree. Based on what I understand of the process, that whole childbirth thing is a doozy. No guy I know would handle that kind of pain very well. Sure, we're taught to be stoic and to shrug off little aches and pains, but our pain tolerance is only so high. We just don't do very well on the high end of the pain scale. Or, as someone once famously said, "I don't know why they tell guys to grow a pair. Those things are sensitive and weak. They should tell them to grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding."
The flip side of that, of course, is that us guys shrug off a lot of little things. I remember rolling my ankle and stubbing my fingers roughly a bajillion times playing basketball as a kid. A bunch of us did; it was just part of the game. We didn't talk about it much, though. You'd incur a minor injury, try to walk it off a little bit or shake it off, and then continue playing as if nothing had happened. You knew someone had actually hurt themselves if they actually complained about it. I know a bunch of my female friends marveled at why we'd put ourselves through that (it was fun). So, despite our poor showing at the high end of the pain scale, guys seem to do better at the low end of the scale.
All of this leads me to propose my pain scale translation for guys theory. It's a little bit like the "rule of three" in the old American Pie movies. Whenever a guy gives you a number on the pain scale, that's not the actual number. Instead, you have to realize that the guy pain scale really only goes from what would objectively be a 2 to a 5. Anything above a 5 is "ow ow ow ow" to us anyway, so asking for a number above there is a little bit like asking us to guess the distance from here to Jupiter. The scale is so large that we have no good way of estimating a value. Similarly, anything below a 2 isn't something that we recognize as pain. That's more like "huh, that's annoying."
So if you're asking a guy to give you a number on the pain scale, you're realistically asking him to tell you where on the scale between 2 and 5 he lies. In short, our scale is compressed. So, whatever number the guy tells you, divide it by 3, and then add 2 to it. That's the actual number on the pain scale that corresponds to what he's feeling. Let's do a little quick math: if a guy tells you that he's feeling a 10 on the pain scale, that actually corresponds to a 5.33 (2 + 10/3). Since both numbers fall into "ow ow ow" territory anyway, that checks out. On the low side, say that a guy tells you that he's feeling a 1 on the pain scale. That works out to a 2.33 (2 + 1/3), which is just barely painful enough for a guy to mention it in the first place. Interestingly enough, a 3 is 3 no matter what (2 + 3/3 = 3), so you might even get a "true" number by accident using this scale.
All in all, the logic seems to check out. My number translation theory can generate a reasonable response on both the low end and the high end, and even a number that matches up with what the guy actually says under the right circumstances. Sounds right to me.
Comments
Post a Comment