I knew they were making fun of men. I knew it was a sexist joke. The war between the sexes is probably the first conflict we encounter in life. I recalled the day my daughter had come home from first grade, her face red with fury. With my coaxing, it eventually came forth.
Boys go to Mars to get more candy bars.
Now, this does not impress me as a specimen of high-flown devastating rhetoric, but it had its desired effect on my daughter. The war was on. It is a given that, in this vast and lonely world, people enjoy finding a place by identifying with a group, and highlighting differences with those outside the group. As I looked across that dining hall I saw lots of ways the children could have divided up against each other. It would have been easy to choose sides according to ancient ethnic feuding lines.