I just staged my own little Three Stooges movie. I played all three stooges. All that's left to do is poke myself in both eyes.

When I was in junior high, I was in the habit of fidgeting a greal deal while I talked on the phone. I still tend to fidget while I'm on the phone, but not nearly as much as I did then—and when I fidget now, I'm generally aware of what I'm doing. Back then, my hands just kind of fluttered around on their own, and I didn't pay much attention to what they were up to.

That's how I ended up stapling myself from time to time. I'd sit on the kitchen counter, twirling the phone cord around—phones had cords 20 years ago, whippersnappers—and when I was done twirling, I'd start playing with the Swingline. After putting a couple dozen staples into whatever was handy, I'd start air stapling, which is kind of like being in an air band, only more bureaucratic. Ch-chung! Ch-chung! Ch-chung! went the Swingline, and then fuck! I'd have a staple in my finger. I once stapled myself twice during a single phone conversation, though in my defense, it was a very long conversation. If I were on a nature show, I'd be that little calf the lions decide to isolate from the herd and rip to shreds. "Let's go for the one with all the staples in her hooves," they'd say to each other.

I think someone should start a band and call it "Tricksy Hobbitses." If you need a doo-wop girl, give me a ring.

You know, I think most men don't have any real idea of what healthy weight ranges for women are. I think that when they think of a hypothetical woman at a given height and try to come up with a number for her weight, they tend to undershoot the healthy range, often dramatically. I can't seem to find any articles on this topic, so this is just my impression, and it's quite possible that I'm wrong. Still, I keep overhearing or reading things that are way off: at one point, I overheard a guy tell his friend that a woman who's six feet tall "should" weigh around 125 (depending on frame size, an ideal weight for a woman that tall would be somewhere between 140 and 180). I remember reading about a personals site for which registrants filled out a form listing characteristics they wanted in someone they dated. The site maintainers ended up changing "desired weight range" from a numerical value to something like "thinner, average, larger, or no preference" when they found that something like 80% of the men who registered with the site wanted to date someone "under 115 pounds." 115 pounds might be a healthy weight if you're somewhere between 4'11" and 5'3". Even then, it's slender. There are more examples, but you get the idea.

I have no idea whether or not this kind of distortion, when it exists, translates to real-world rather than hypothetical examples. If what I'm talking about is, in fact, common, then you'd think that men would often underestimate the weight of women they actually know. But since most of the men I know have the good sense not to walk around guessing the weight of their female acquaintances, that's even trickier territory.