I have the privilege of meeting new patients, people who share some very intimate details of their lives with me, every day. Some stories are sad, some are moving and some are just truly inspiring.

Recently, I met a delightful woman who has had her fair share of challenges and, she said, it is because of her faith that she stayed strong and pushed through. Her son had traumatic brain injury and she cared for her grandchildren in spite of serious illnesses of her own. And every day she has her two young grandchildren repeat, before going to school, that God loves them, that they are leaders and not followers, and that they are strong. In her hospital room, she had bibles and all sorts of religious literature. Clearly, faith is what helped her to be so strong, so powerful, and so successful.

Seeing how religious she was, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask her for a favor.

“So whenever it is you get to heaven, can you make sure that you get me in, too? If I’m already dead and not there, see what you can do to get me in.”

And laughing, she said: “I don’t know if they’ll let me in because I have to have a few words with Eve first! It’s because of her we women have so many problems like periods and mammograms. I’d like to see about changing a few things.”

At which point, I suddenly got scared. This lovely woman was charming and persuasive. What if she was able to get it so that men had to equally share in some of these burdens. She saw the terror in my face as I shouted: “No! Please don’t do that. I really like the status quo!”

I mean, let’s face it, we guys dodged some pretty big bullets like menstruation and childbirth and annual Pap smears. Every year, women have their breasts flattened into a pancake for a mammogram. My wife thinks I’m a wimp because I am afraid to have a prostate exam. And what would camping with the guys be like if we guys couldn’t just empty our bladders anywhere we thought convenient? Or long car rides?

No, I’m pretty convinced that it’s better for humanity to leave things the way they are. Women are, for example, much better at planning. Half the time I don’t know what month it is, let alone the date, whereas women have their own built in lunar calendar for much of their adult lives. On the weekends, this can become a bit of a problem when my wife comes at me with her list of home chores for me — a list she has been planning all week. And by “planning,” I mean “adding onto.”

Men have adopted distracting tactics to avoid the weekend list. Brunch was invented just for this purpose. And breakfast in bed. And the Sunday paper (especially with all the coupons and planning things). Golf is not my sport, but I understand that men will often get up really early for a tee time, all to avoid the dreaded list that had been meticulously planned. In my case, woodworking serves a similar purpose — if I’m in my woodshop making chairs for the dining room, well, I cannot get to the honey-do list.

And so it dawned on me, as I was talking to that inspiring patient of mine, that women are better than men at virtually everything they put their mind to — they are just built that way. God bless the status quo.