I had only brothers growing up. The difference between boys and girls wasn’t something I gave much thought to, or understood, until one hot summer day. Our mothers cooled the neighborhood kids by opening up a hose. We laughed and hooted and got grassy and muddy.

Later, I was thrown in the bathtub with a girl who lived down the street. And I asked her and her mom how come she had a completely different set of equipment than me and my brothers.

“That’s just how girls are,” the girl said.

“Oh,” I said. “Can you shoot me that orange motorboat?”

I was more into playing with the toy navy of blue and orange motorboats in the bathtub. Who knew that it would become a big deal?

It wasn’t long before it became a big deal. My second-grade student teacher, Miss Baninski, was gorgeous and I was pretty sure I was going to marry her. We sat on “home-rug” for Quiet Time after kickball at recess. Miss Baninski would fan us with an opened manila folder. Some of the kids would sit and think. Others slept. Not me, though.

I’d lay on my back, pretending to sleep, so that when Miss Baninski walked over me, I’d open my eyes to look under her skirt. Something about the quick glance of her thighs was thrilling and stirring.

I’ll fast forward past the usual discoveries and epiphanies in understanding women. We’ll just say that every time I discovered something new, it was just as thrilling and stirring as looking under Miss Baninski’s skirt.

But not in medical school. Med school blandly deconstructed men and women into the hormonal, the physiological and the anatomical. It was all so factual and boring. I felt like I was in the tub again, not bothered by hormones and into cool stuff like heart physiology and brain damage and tropical infectious diseases. I memorized enough about puberty, menopause and in between to pass the test, but then I forgot it all.

Once again, I find myself wishing I had paid more attention. Years ago, I jokingly said that I was looking forward to my wife going through menopause because she always makes our bedroom stiflingly hot. Hot flashes were about all I knew about menopause. Little did I realize that happy and joking one minute turns into fury and yelling the next. The other day, my wife was telling me a story and then, suddenly, she’s yelling at me. I, like a good Italian, yell back, but then she can’t understand why I’m yelling.

I tell her, indignant, “Because you started yelling at me for no reason.”

“Well, I was yelling, but don’t you see, I wasn’t yelling at YOU. It was the situation,” she said.

And there it is.

Turnabout. All of a sudden, I’m “getting all upset for no good reason” and feeling guilty.

I read all of this to her, afraid of her reaction. First she smiled and then she yelled, “Of course. I was right. And you knew it!”

Women — in particular Italian women — are sexy and mysterious, even when they are angry. I don’t understand them at all. I only know that oftentimes I feel like that little kid lying on his back and looking up in awe.