The XY Files

Ask most guys what they want to do with their precious time off, and you’re likely to get very unimagi-native responses.

"I’m doing it," is my usual reply on a Sunday, when I’m clearly busy lying in bed, reading or strumming a guitar. Doing pretty much nothing makes most males perfectly happy.

But ask a woman – say, your wife – the same question and you’ll get a recitation that lasts half an hour. Women never run out of creative ideas to fill your time.

And now science has an explanation for why this is.

It seems that us males are just not genetically up to the challenge of the frenzied pace of modern life. Our chromosomes, researchers tell us, are a bunch of lazy asses.

Yes, American researchers earlier this year came up with a hypothesis about the genetic makeup of males and females that may shed light on why certain sexes enjoy shopping, while others prefer napping.

Recall from your high school biology classes that both males and females possess 46 chromosomes. Men are said to be XY, while women are XX, meaning their 46th chromosome is a second "X" instead of the male "Y." And it’s that extra "X" factor, scientists say, that makes women potentially better, faster and stronger.

In fact, some scientists believe the male "Y" chromosome has been shedding genes for the past 10 million years – a trend that could make the ne’er-do-well "Y" chromosome extinct one day. And (gulp!) males along with it.

On the other hand, researchers at Penn State, Duke and the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge say that up to 15 percent of the genes (or 200 to 300) on the female "X" chromosome are quite active. This means women may be growing in complexity, while guys are genetically "eroding" like a stack of moldy old men’s magazines.

As Dr. Huntington Willard, a gene expert at Duke University, puts it: "We poor men have only 45 chromosomes to do our work with because the 46th is the pathetic Y that has only a few genes that operate below the waist and above the knees."

"In contrast," he continues, "women have the full 46 chromosomes that they are getting work from and the 46th is a second X that is working at levels greater than we knew."

And don’t even try to argue that all this extra genetic material makes women harder to figure out.

"Women have more complexity, which men view as unpredictability," sniffs David Page, a molecular biologist at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And while women are said to be creatures of "infinite variety," Dr. Willard concludes that, "Genetically speaking, if you’ve met one man, you’ve met them all."

Who pays for this type of research, I wonder?

Do we really need scientists to tell us that men have limited options?

After all, we’ve forsaken a lot of the finer things in life that help women cope in the modern world – new clothes, spas and massages, body care products, the emotional support of friends. We’ve made do with some very simple basics. We don’t ask for much.

And now even that is being threatened with extinction.

So there’s really only one thing left to do. We males have to come up with some plausible uses for our vanishing "Y" chromosome. We have to reclaim our space, our very right to exist. It’s not enough to say – as we do about all the old sports equipment, stacks of vinyl LP records and other junk cluttering up our closet space – "Someday I plan to do something with all this stuff." The time to act is NOW!

Maybe we should seek some sage advice on the matter from that unimpeachable source of "guy" wisdom, the Internet, which recently sent my way this list of "guy rules" (courtesy of supreme guy Johnny Litton):

1. Men ARE NOT mind readers.

2. Learn to work the toilet seat. You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don’t hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

3. Sunday sports: it’s like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.

4. Shopping is NOT a sport And no, we are never going to think of it that way.

5. Crying is blackmail.

6. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!

7. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That’s what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

8. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.

9. Anything we said six months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after seven days.

10. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," we will act like nothing’s wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

11. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.

12. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

So, okay, maybe this is just the sort of thing that shows why males really do need to become extinct. Bad example. Maybe I should just work harder to come up with some ideas for our survival on my own. And if I weren’t saddled with this lazy-ass "Y" chromosome, I would be busy doing just that.

But, after all, the Supreme Being must have had something in mind by giving us the "Y" chromosome. So what function does that funny little corkscrew perform, anyway? Scientists aren’t sure yet, but they think it may have something to do with channel surfing and ordering pizza.