29 May, 2008

Girls Can't Skim Stones

While surfing the other evening I came across this ball which bounces on water. It's called a Waboba. It looks pretty cool. You can see a video of it in action here.
While I was starting to watch the video, the Better Half came into the room and started watch it too.

"Can you do that thing with stones bouncing on the water?" she asked me.

"Skimg stones?! Of course I can" I replied, "I'm a guy."

"I can't" she said.

"No" I replied "because you're not a guy."

"My father can" she said.

"Duh! Of course he can. He's a guy!"

She was a bit confused now and seemed to be toying with the idea of accusing me of being sexist. Me!? Sexist?! I wasn't being sexist, I was just stating a fact of life.

Girls can't skim stones!

She didn't agree, so I did a quick straw poll and found that 100% of the women in room could not skim stones. Not convinced by these hard facts I tried some research on the topic on the internet. What better place to find hard evidence than the web site for the World Stone Skimming Championships which take place on a little island off the coast of Scotland called Easdale.

The results of the 2007 championships speak for themselves. The winner of the women's event, from South Africa, skimmed her stone 29m. Second was 26m and third 23m.

The Better Half thought that this was evidence that they could skim stones, but I had to point out that these were basically statistical anomalies. Freaks if you will. After all these were fully grown women at the peak of their stone skimming careers taking part in the world championships, and yet the winning distance in the under 10 boys competition was 24m. A puny young boy! He would have come third in the women's competition. The boys in the 10-15 years section got much better distances than the best of the women.

To further demonstrate my point there was only one girl in the girls under 10 years section that managed to skim a stone! One! In the whole world!


I did another straw poll at work, and again found that 100% of the female responses were that they couldn't skim stones, but her boyfriend could.
She put it down to the wrist action of fellas and that girls couldn't be arsed.

Girls can't skim stones! Okay - maybe there's some evidence that girls can skim stones, but I it's a bit like girls peeing standing up. They can do it but it's not a pretty site and they'll be wet after.