122 I Can Read You Like a Book
the birthday monkey had earned 39 candles, so it must have been a
blazing cake—the attacking monkey did what came naturally: he
ripped the testicles off his adversary. Alpha-males do things similar
to this, which is why “protecting the precious” is a posture ingrained
in men. No thought is involved; it’s pure instinct.
Driving through the outskirts of a small town last summer, I
encountered a line of three cars that had been stopped by a woman
on the road crew. She and her counterpart about two-tenths of a
mile down the road relayed the status to each other; one would
flash her “slow” sign while the other flashed her “stop” sign so that
one lane of traffic could move through at all times. For some rea-
son, my side continued to stare at a “stop” sign for more than a
minute—too much for the drivers in front of me. They did U-turns.
It was too much for the stop-sign holder as well. She held up the
sign in front of her face, and then put it down to talk on the radio as
she turned her back to me. She was embarrassed, helpless, guilty;
she took this personally. Another few words on the radio. Although I
couldn’t hear what she said, her body language communicated...
“Please give me back some control. Let my people go!” She didn’t
make eye contact until she flipped the sign to “slow” and waved me
forward.
Her gestures showed that her mind was looking for an outlet,
an immediate answer to “What do I do to get out of this uncomfort-
able situation?” Her solution was to use everything around her as a
barrier between her and the people she presumed were judging
her: the stop/slow sign, her radio, her helmet that partly shielded her
eyes from ours, and her back.