Letters To M'Lady

Letter 3 ~ Men are Steel, Women are Balsa Wood

My dearest Lady Crystal,

I was very glad to see thy letter arrive today, then saddened to hear that someone has broken thy heart. The young man who made such a terrible mistake will look back and regret these events for the rest of his life.

My heart goes out to thee, Lady Crystal, but alas, I fear there is nothing of comfort I can say to ease thy heart. This, unfortunately, is a part of life and we all experience this at one point or another. All I can do is try to offer thee some wisdom and insight so that thy future may benefit from it.

I usually tell this story to the male half of our species, but thou will find a way to apply it to thy own life; I have no doubt of thy intellect.

The story begins in my days of school...

Yes, I too was young once.

I was taking physics class with Mr. Orville, our instructor, and we were through most of the year with only one semester left. Mr. Orville was lecturing on the qualities of different materials when he off-handedly mentioned that balsa wood was stronger than steel.

We, the class, were incredulous of this statement and asked him to clarify if he meant the balsa wood used to make toy airplanes, wine bottle corks, and such things. He assured us, he was referring to the same. Most of the class declared that balsa wood could not possibly be stronger than steel. Mr. Orville responded that this was a good thing to prove for the class.

So he announced that for our final semester, we would have a project to complete and our final grade depended on the success of our project. He then had one of the students pass out a bottle of wood glue to each student, while he brought in a large cardboard box. When he reached into the box, his hand came out with small rectangular sticks of balsa wood. Three of these sticks would equal the thickness of a pencil, so they were very small, as thou can picture, m'Lady. Mr. Orville then had a student count out 20 of these long sticks and give them to each student.

Our assignment, Mr. Orville announced, was to build a bridge. This bridge had to span 8 inches (20 cm) and be 6 inches high (15 cm). We could build any design we wished and we had the entire semester to complete the bridge.

As you can imagine, it was with happy smiles that we heard we would have no other homework for the semester. And so it was that the first few days was filled with researching and planning our designs for our bridge. After that, a routine became established, cutting and glueing our bridges together. The weeks passed quickly, filled with the frustration of waiting for glue to dry and figuring out what could be accomplished on the bridge as we waited for other parts of the bridge to dry.

As the end of the semester neared, Mr. Orville announced that on the last day of school, we students were to bring in every class book we had. Now, we all had 8 classes so thou can imagine the effort it took to bring 8 full-sized textbooks to Physics class. As we sat at our desks with our stack of text books before us, Mr. Orville told us how our final grade was to be assessed.

Our grade was to test the weight our bridges could hold.

First we moved the student desks from the back of the room to leave a clear area around the back wall. Mr. Orville placed some tape on the floor just next to the back wall. The first bridge was placed in the place marked by the tape, and textbooks were placed on top of the bridge. The back wall kept the pile of books from leaning, but the bridge supported the weight.

It became quite exciting to see how many books each bridge could hold, as thou can imagine, Lady Crystal. Some bridges collapsed quite early, others amazed us. The stack of textbooks grew taller and taller, some made it to the roof. Imagine a stack of text books from floor to ceiling, incredible! Inevitably, however, all the bridges collapsed with a sudden crunching sound, school books a-falling.

After the last of all the bridges, Mr. Orville asked us what we had learned. We had to agree that balsa wood was stronger than steel. But why, we asked, was not balsa wood used for building bridges? Mr. Orville asked in return, what was the common element among all the bridges collapsing?

The class sat silent until one student spoke up. "There was no warning of the collapse."

"Correct", answered Mr. Orville.

Mr. Orville then went on to explain that even though balsa wood was stronger than steel, we chose to use steel for its other qualities. Steel stretches and bends, thus giving warning of its failure.

It was quite a remarkable lesson really, m'Lady. Balsa wood is clearly superior to steel in strength, but it is steel's other qualities that make it our preferred choice of construction material. In many respects, concrete is similar to balsa wood, but when steel and concrete are combined, we have something superior to either of the two elements.

I imagine by now, Lady Crystal, thou art wondering what this has to do with thy current situation. Well, the lesson I learned in that physics class did not become apparent to me until I experienced my first heartbreak. Upon reflection on all the things we had done wrong, I realized an important point: men are steel bridges and women are balsa bridges.

If thou thinks about it, our connection to another person is a bridge, and depending on who we are, that dictates the qualities of that bridge. Men and women do have common characteristics of their genders, however, and we can see this reflected in our relationship bridges. Women's bridges will stand silently tall and proud, supporting all the books a man stacks on that bridge, until one day the relationship is over and the man is left dumbstruck wondering what happened. Men will moan and groan and agonize about the books a woman stacks on his bridge, he will hang on even when he knows it is best to let go. Thou may think me chauvinistic, m'Lady, but truly I am not. I merely make note of the observations I have made of the human race.

If thou takes away anything from this letter then take away this: Do not stack too many books on your love's bridge.

Sincerely Yours, Sir Raven

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Credit: Banner image photo by Enrique del Barrio at AdobeStock.com