One of my friends posted this on Facebook and I got a chuckle out of it, so I thought I’d post it here:

A guy named Ron is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a
movie; she accepts and they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he
asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to
see each other regularly, and after a while neither of them is seeing anyone
else.

And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine.
Without really thinking, she says it aloud, “Do you realize that, as of
tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

And then there is silence in the car.

To Elaine it seemed like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself,”Geez, I
wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he’s been feeling confined
by our relationship; maybe he thinks I’m trying to push him into some kind
of obligation that he doesn’t want, or isn’t sure of.

And Ron is thinking, “Gosh. Six months.”

Then Elaine is thinking, “But, hey, I’m not so sure I want this kind of
relationship either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space so I’d have
time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are,
moving steadily toward. I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to
keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward
marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that
level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?”

And Ron is thinking, “So that means it was…let’s see…February when we
started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer, which
means…lemme check the odometer. Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change
here.”

Elaine is thinking, “He’s upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I’m reading
this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more
intimacy, more commitment — maybe he has sensed - even before I sensed it -
that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that’s it. That’s why he’s
so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He’s afraid of being
rejected.”

And Roger is thinking, And I’m gonna have them look at the transmission
again. I don’t care what those morons say, it’s still not shifting right.
And they’d better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What
cold weather? It’s 87 degrees out and this thing is shifting like a garbage
truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves six hundred dollars.”

And Elaine is thinking, “He’s angry. And I don’t blame him. I’d be angry,
too. I feel so guilty putting him through this, but I can’t help the way I
feel. I’m just not sure.”

And Ron is thinking, “They’ll probably say it’s only a ninety-day warranty.
Scumbags.”

And Elaine is thinking, “Maybe I’m just too idealistic, waiting for a knight
to come riding up on his white horse, when I’m sitting right here next to a
perfectly good person, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to
truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered,
schoolgirl romantic fantasy.”

And Ron is thinking, “Warranty? They want a warranty? I’ll give them a
warranty. I’ll take their warranty and …”

“Ron,” Elaine says aloud.

“What?” says Ron, startled.

“Please don’t torture yourself like this,” she says, her eyes beginning to
brim with tears. “Maybe I never should have. Oh God, I feel so…” (She breaks
down, sobbing.)

“What?” says Ron.

“I’m such a fool,” Elaine sobs. “I mean, I know there’s no knight. I really
know that. It’s silly. There’s no knight, and there’s no horse.”

“There’s no horse?” says Ron.

“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” Elaine says.

“No!” says Ron, glad to finally know the correct answer.

“It’s just that…it’s that I - I need some time,” Elaine says.

(There is a fifteen-second pause while Ron, thinking as fast as he can,
tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he
thinks might work.)

“Yes,” he says.

(Elaine, deeply moved, touches his hand.) “Oh, Ron, do you really feel that
way?” she says.

“What way?” says Ron.

“That way about time,” says Elaine.

“Oh,” says Ron. “Yes.”

(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to
become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves
a horse. At last she speaks.)

“Thank you, Ron,” she says.

“Thank you,” says Ron.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed — a conflicted, tortured
soul — and weeps until dawn.

Ron gets back to his place, opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV and
immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two
Czechoslovakians he’s never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his
mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but
he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he
figures it’s better if he just doesn’t think about it.

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them,
and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In
painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he
said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, every
expression, every gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible
ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for
weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never
getting bored with it either.

Meanwhile, Ron, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of
his and Elaine’s, will pause just before serving, frown and say, “Norm, did
Elaine ever own a horse?”

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the difference between men and women.