They say girls mature faster than boys. I guess that's why God gave the male species such hard heads. The thicker skulls keep boys a little safer from bad ideas and offer some reasoning into otherwise unreasonable behavior.

That's why I used to do front flips from a second story loft to the couch on the floor below. It's why my friend thought jumping a ditch with a Schwinn was a good idea until he landed on the other side without his bike. That's why my son thinks he's Alberto Tomba and our stairs are the Italian Alps, and it explains how bungee jumping and the sport of rugby came into existence.

My two daughters present a whole new level of challenges, but, as a rule, I don't have to worry about them treating the stairs like a black diamond ski slope. That distinction is reserved for my son and his cardboard box.

Search for "stunts gone wrong" on Youtube and try to find a female. It can't be done. There is no female Evil Knievel and women did not create

Jackass the movie or television series.

There is a simple reason for this, as one of my former co- workers used to say, "Boys are hard headed." It's one of the obvious differences between males and females. Girls can take in information from reliable sources and make reasonable decisions. Outside information is not capable of penetrating the skull of a young boy and some men. That information must come from within. In other words, girls can learn from information, while boys must learn from experience.

If a girl is told, "It's not a good idea to jump your bike over that ditch because you could break your neck," she most likely surmises the situation, agrees, and never considers jumping the ditch with her bike or anything else. In fact, she probably never even considered jumping the ditch in the first place.

A boy, on the other hand, immediately starts wondering if anyone has ever jumped the ditch before. He scopes out the take- off area to see how much speed he can get to clear the ditch and checks the landing area to see if he'll need his little brother to watch out for on- coming traffic. Then he wonders if a skateboard might work better. There's no thought given to how it might feel ramming into the other side of the ditch, or if the cross bar of his bike might turn him from a baritone into a soprano. He doesn't think about his face sliding across asphalt until he's experienced that pain first hand. Then, and only then, is the lesson learned.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, otherwise we wouldn't have Britney Spears or the Octomom. But, in general, hard headedness, in its most basic form, is reserved for males. The proof can be found on any playground. While the girls are sliding down the tunnel slide, the boys are climbing on top of it. When the girls are making sand castles with their buckets, the boys are wearing their buckets on their heads as they run blindly into various poles. It's not stupidity, it's genetics. A Y chromosome comes with a thick skull.