This world is full of mysteries. How did we all come to be on planet Earth? Did Atlantis really exist? And who DID put the "ram" in the "rama-lama-ding-dong"?
Though these are valid questions, no mysteries are as perplexing as the age-old mysteries surrounding the opposite gender.
One such mystery that has always piqued my curiosity is the phenomenon of the male speaking voice. I first noticed it one day in the 11th grade when my father, William C. Haselden, was talking to me about a documentary that he had seen on the History Channel earlier that week. In the grand tradition of being a dad, he gets excited about very little, with the exception of heavy machinery and History Channel documentaries, thus he was speaking in a pitch that one would expect from a cartoon squirrel
Then [cue suspenseful music] the phone rang. When he answered it and said hello, the Pitch-O-Meter dropped from animated rodent mode to the Barry White setting.
Since, I have been keeping careful, detailed tabs on the pitch of men's voices when they answer the phone, and, sure enough, many men drop their vocal pitches when greeting who could very well be Darrell from Napa Auto Parts, to whom the typical man must display the maximum possible amount of masculinity.
I asked Mike West, a music student, about this, and he says that the reason he does it is because he perceives his voice to be high naturally, so he feels the need to compensate. I also asked Howie Snider, a journalism professor, and he said that he had never before realized that men did this; however, he told me that he tried to counter the lowering in his voice when he answered the phone one morning and sounded like the AFLAC duck.
Sadly, humanity remains without a concrete answer to this mystery of life. In exchange for the answer from someone, I offer the following explanation for why women travel to the restroom in groups.
Often when a woman goes to the restroom in a herd, she rarely has to actually use the bathroom. On the contrary, she feels the restroom is a safe haven and the proper place to make fun of her friends' prom dates. I recall a dance in the 7th grade at which my best friend asked me to go to the bathroom with her so that she could tell me that my date, Jason, was a bad dancer. In retrospect, we could've gone without that particular excursion because one would have had to be extremely groove-deficient and/or blind not to realize that Jason was a few leisure suits short of a funk master.
The solutions to the little mysteries will obviously not solve the never-ending battle of the sexes, as the battle has been going on since Eve got herself and Adam kicked out of Eden with an apple and her evil powers of seduction. This is likely the reason that the downfall of mankind is often credited to women (especially in alternative rock), but Adam probably had it coming. He probably told her that the fig leaf made her butt look fat.
Write to Aleshia at aahaselden@bsu.edu
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