Man Flu

If there’s anything more likely to prove that men are indeed from Mars and women are from somewhere very far away from Mars, is when men get sick. We’re all familiar with ‘man-flu’. What’s known as a common cold in females mutates into the bubonic plague when it manifests in the male body. The simple blowing of a runny nose takes on the proportions of stopping Niagara Falls (hence the marketing of MANSIZE tissues) and it’s no coincidence that ads for pain relief feature bare chested muscular hulks, holding their heads which throb with pain of gigantic proportions. Everyone knows, particularly the male advertising execs, men never get headaches, they get Migraines.
Yet perversely, I’ve observed in my own male specimen that when he is genuinely ill you never hear a peek about it and the doctor is to be avoided at all costs. In fact cost is usually the reason for not going for a check up. “Ah sure what would I be doing giving that fella 50 quid when he’s only going to tell me what I already know myself,” says the same man, who without a second thought, will blow the same amount of money (and more) on Paddy Power. No, far better to suffer in relative silence, bother the women in their life for their opinion, ignore them and only be spurned into action after reading something on the internet.
This is clearly the other reason why women were designed to give birth. The first is that women are adept multi-taskers and so can juggle being pregnant, looking after the home and working at the same time. If men were in child they would clearly only be able to sit still for nine months concentrating on ‘being pregnant’. Every slight discomfort during that time would be hugely significant, however once labour actually begun they wouldn’t go near the hospital. “I don’t know if my waters broke, sure I’d never notice that sort of thing while I’m watching the match. Contractions? I’d say it’s just indigestion. I read on a forum that indigestion is very common at this stage.” If men were responsible for the procreation of life the human race would have died out years ago. Unfortunately the result of this evolution is that women have to put up with the strange mix of hypochondria and medic phobia in the male of the species; and there’s no pill to cure that pain.