Are men the biggest losers?

Well, last week I had to weigh in on studies, you know those “scientific” investigations that are administered I don’t know how which reveal nothing about something, or is it the other way around. With computers to facilitate the compilation of information, and the internet to proliferate it, life is all about studies. You can probably find a study to support about any idea you have. And if you don’t like the results you got from the study you found, just wait. Within a week you will probably find one that suggests the opposite.
Well, I am conducting my own study. Look, I qualify as a studier. I have a computer and I have the internet. The question is, “Do men or women lose more things?
So the survey goes like this:
1. Are you male or female?
2. Would you say that you lose five, ten or fifteen item per week?
Pretty good, don’t you think? So if I tie all of the responses to a gender and then total all of the responses and divide by the total number of respondents, I should be ready to publish, right?
Actually my study is not designed to lay blame. My theory is that this probably has nothing to do with men being more analytical and women being more emotional, unless of course you are talking about losing your calculator or your child.
I am just wondering whether losing things is related to the number and size of places one has to put things. In our family, the men lose things. It’s because they use their pockets for storage. Give them something too big to fit into a pocket, or dress them in sweats, and that’s it. They will not know where they put their sunglasses, their coats, their shoes, their books, and in the case of wearing sweats, their wallets, their car keys, their money,
But wait a minute. There may be a flaw in my study. Just one “poor loser” could distort the results. For instance, one male in the Butterbean family has lost enough items to skew the best of studies.
He has lost several wallets, the real ones with his driver’s license and credit cards inside. He came home from scout camp without his sleeping bag one year. He has lost indoor sleeping equipment too­—at least two quilts and several pillows. Add to the list numerous tools and electronic devices, you know, cell phones, chargers, iPods, etc. He has supplied sunglasses for the masses out there somewhere. When he was young, the rule was: you get one coat per winter; if you lose that you are wearing a sweatshirt. with or without pockets. Once he lost his pants while wearing them. And he has lost his shirt due to buying so many sunglasses.
So my theory is that women lose fewer things because they carry a purse. The bigger the purse, the fewer lost items. When women are away from home and need to put their sunglasses down so they can put on mascara, they just throw them in their purse, which by the way is where the mascara came from. When they take the keys from the ignition, they drop them in the purse, even when they are not wearing sweats.
When women finish with their cell phones, their nail clippers, their change, it goes in the purse. Not only do they have a place to put everything, but they have everything they need hanging from one shoulder.
My daughter’s purse is probably more appropriately called a suitcase. (Come to think of it, she is always complaining about shoulder pain.) Inside her bag are all of life’s necessities and then some: ibuprofen, at least one water bottle, various tools, a curling iron, a full-sized lint roller, a chicken sandwich, her current novel, a pair of flip-flops, a camera, extra batteries, hair spray, All of those items would be lost if she had to depend on pockets. Nothing is lost; just don’t ask her to find anything in there.
Me, now. I may be able to balance out the poor loser. I only lose one item per week. I hate to say it, but it is usually my purse.