Not Such a Silly Girl After All

Scott and Rick laughed at me—silly girl—when I wondered aloud if mice could get through the light-shows-through crack between our porch door and its frame.

“A mouse can’t get through that!” they said, grinning.
“I’ve heard they can get through a hole the width of a dime,” I said.
“You thought it meant the thickness of a dime?” they teased me, shaking their heads. “It meant the diameter of a dime.”

I didn’t argue with them. I laughed at myself. But I thought, I’ll check this out.
Eventually I did, and found this online:

“Mice are actually somewhat smaller than they appear and can squeeze their head through a hole only about 1/4-inch in diameter, about the same size as a wooden pencil. After getting its head through a hole, a mouse has no trouble getting the rest of its body through.”

A quarter-inch. That ain’t no diameter of a dime.

All too easily, women believe that men know what they are talking about. Maybe it’s because men always seem so sure they know what they are talking about. It never seems to cross their minds that their way of seeing things might not be the way things are. Women seem more open to this fact of human life.

And this, for interest’s sake:
“Although rats are much larger animals than mice, they can squeeze through holes only 1/2-inch in diameter.”