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You can't get enough of this sort of objective feedback, so one of the people I called was my sister, who didn't seem to understand the moral support that was expected of her.

"The way you're headed, you'll be single for the rest of your life," she suggested cheerfully.

I should explain that I have two sisters: a doctor sister, who thinks she is smarter than I am, and a teacher sister, who thinks the same thing. Both are younger and both are wrong. In this case, I was talking to my doctor sister, but it could have been the teacher; they're interchangeable, in my view.

"But all and all, women find me very attractive," I prompted, letting her know what she was supposed to be saying.

"Your experience suggests otherwise."

"Well, what's wrong with these women, then, that they don't want to go out with me more than once?"

"The problem," my sister said in a fake I'm-a-doctor-so-let-me- diagnose-the-illness tone, "is that you have a lot of character flaws and you aren't willing to change."

"Flaws?" I sputtered. "What are you talking about? What flaws?"

"You want me to name them all?" she asked incredulously.

"I sure hope you never talk to your patients like this," I told her.

We hung up and I thought about what she had said. She had known me my whole life. She'd seen me grow up in a house mostly filled with women and had watched me experience a marriage and daughters and a woman boss and even a female physician.

From my unchanged man point of view, was it any wonder I had flaws? All my life I'd been surrounded by women!

I felt much better and was willing to let the matter go, now that I understood it. This is a typically male approach to problem solving: All we really care about is determining who is to blame. Then I thought about my social calendar, which was strikingly bereft of any female company. I called my sister back.

"Well, okay," I told her. "What if I admitted that I had some of these semi-flawlike characteristics, and might be willing to..." I swallowed hard. "To change them a little. Nothing major! But if I did, what would you say are these so-called failings?"

Now, I don't know what I had in mind when I came up with this, though I am pretty sure whatever it was fell into the category of "Not Much." But my sister, who you'd think would have enough to do already, decided to take it upon herself to compile a list for me. Without my permission, she began inviting other women from my life to join her in the project. Soon the ranks were swelling, including my other sister, my mother, my daughters, and even my junior high school counselor!

I shouldn't have been surprised that she was able to find so many females willing to subscribe to the absurd premise that I needed some sort of group effort dedicated to fixing me. I believe women are often very enthusiastic about forming committees, particularly if they can have meetings and eat chocolate. Men, on the other hand, prefer to form teams: highly integrated, collaborative groups that get together and argue about who gets to be in charge.

"We've decided you don't just need to be changed, you need to be totally remodeled," she chirped. "Sort of like, ‘This Old House,’ only in this case it's, ‘This Old Man.’ Get it?"

"Totally remodeled? I thought you were just going to give me a list of my supposed faults and send them to me so I could see which ones I disagreed with."

"Well...why don't you make your list, and I'll make mine, and then we'll compare?"

This suggestion contained an element I found very distasteful: personal effort. But I saw her point--who knew my minor imperfections better than I? I worked on it for a while, and here's what I came up with:

W. BRUCE CAMERON'S LIST OF SUPPOSED FAULTS

1. Often times I'll sit down to make a list of things I need to get done, but I never seem to do anything on the list. Obviously, I need to learn how to delegate.

2. I really need a sports car of some kind.

3. Usually when a woman is telling me her problems, I will interrupt her and give her advice on how to fix them. I think what women really want is not for me to jump in with solutions, but for me to wait until they are finished talking before I tell them what to do.

4. I can't afford to run out and buy every shiny new gadget that comes on the market. I need to make more money so that I can.

"I made your list," I told my sister. "It's a little long."

"We came up with a hundred and seventy-eight," she replied, "but we haven't heard from Mom yet. Also Mrs. Bunting said she has some."

Mrs. Bunting lived across the street from us when I was in the fourth grade.

"What? A hundred and seventy-eight? You're supposed to be counting my faults, not my, my..."

"Remaining hair follicles?" my sister suggested innocently.

"I think it's a little excessive to run up the score like this."

"I forgot that one: ‘Always uses sports analogies.’”

"Would you cut it out? You are turning this into way too big a deal."

Feeling that she had lost all perspective and was behaving in a fashion so irrational she might wind up losing her license to practice medicine, I decided to turn to an impartial third person--my friend and coworker Sarah--who I knew would be on my side.

Sarah works in the lifestyle department at the newspaper where I am a columnist. She's a couple of years younger than I, and I would probably consider her attractive if it were not for the squat, ugly wedge of a boyfriend she lives with, an unpleasant, thick-skulled guy named Doug. I've pledged to Sarah I'll keep an open mind about him, but he's a real jerk.

I apparently failed to explain the situation adequately, because Sarah immediately became excited about the whole process. "Tell your sister I'm in!" she enthused.

"What? There's nothing to be ‘in.’ What's happening is that my sister has gone overboard and you agree with that."

"What would be so bad about changing your behavior a little? Maybe if you addressed your failings, it would be easier to find someone to love you."

I pondered this. "When you say, ‘to love,’ do you mean what I think you mean?"

"I think I've told you before, it wouldn't hurt for you to be a little more communicative," she reminded me.

"Ah." I waved my hand.

"And what does that mean?" she asked impatiently.

"Just, you know, I'm already communicative."

"Or more sensitive," Sarah plunged on. "Remember when you told Maria she had an ‘old baby’?”

"What? It's just that Mallory had a newborn, a fresh baby. So Maria's baby wasn't the number one new baby anymore. I can't help that," I protested. "But hey, didn't I go to a movie with you that was French?"

"You complained the whole time! People kept telling you to shush!"

"Which just goes to show how idiotic it was," I argued smugly. "Why did they need me to be quiet? It was in French. What, I was interrupting the subtitles?"

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