Living with my three sons and husband can be especially frustrating because they have a significantly different style of communication than I do.

My guys seem to take everything very literally, accepting things without asking any questions or considering the possibility that there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Case in point. Several years ago, my family went to Cooperstown, N.Y., for my middle son's AAU baseball team to compete in a tournament. Since all our players couldn't make the trip, the tournament director had substituted a local boy on our team, and we'd meet him at the first practice.

Upon our arrival, a few of the parents were talking together and the conversation turned to the new player.

Someone asked if anyone knew the boy's name. My husband Kevin said, "I can't remember it right now, but I remember it was unusual."

He was lost deep in thought for a moment and then brightened.

"Player, that was it."

"Player?" one of the parents asked. "That is different."

I immediately realized where Kevin had gotten that name. The coach had sent out a team roster via email before we'd left, and yes, beside the 9th spot, there was listed the word, "Player."

I doubted that was the boy's real name and that our coach wasn't sure what his name was so he just typed in "Player." I quickly changed the subject so that I could keep the "Kevin damage" to a minimum.

A while later, when we were alone, I told him that I thought the coach had just filled in the word "player" because he hadn't known the boy's name at that point.

"No, I think that's his name," Kevin replied.

"I don't think so," I told him, but he insisted that it was. Later that afternoon, our team met the new player, whose name was Chris. Kevin looked over at me and shrugged. Honest to God, I don't know what men would do if not for the shrug.

It conveys "Oh well", "Oops", or "Who cares?" so very well.

This literal meaning problem has trickled down to my sons, too. When my middle son, David, was in kindergarten, the teacher sent home a note saying that David needed to write his name on the line provided on his worksheets. I reminded David every day when he went to school, "Be sure to write your name on the line," but still he wouldn't do it. Finally, he became exasperated at my telling him again, and he said, "But mom, I did write my name on the line." He held his paper up to show me. "See," he explained, "I wrote it right in the middle of the line". Indeed it was on the line, and I suddenly understood his perspective.

"David," I said, shaking with the sheer excitement of possibly having a breakthrough, "Write it on top of the line."

The light bulb went on. "Oh," he said and erased his name that had been smack dab in the middle of the line so it wasn't even legible. "Nobody ever said it had to be on top of the line," he remarked, rewriting his name in the proper place. I bit my tongue, thinking ahead to a day when he would have a similar miscommunication with his wife, bless her heart.

I'll have to tell her that I tried my best - I really did, but it had been me against nature, and nature won.

Jason, my youngest, has done some similar things. On a first grade math worksheet, he did the first two sections. Then on the third section were some addition and subtraction problems with the words "addition or subtraction" as the heading. Jason wrote "both" in the space provided and moved on to the fourth section without solving the problems because he'd interpreted "addition or subtraction' as a question.

Even Billy, who usually is a pretty clear thinker, has had his literal moments. On a warm spring day, Kevin told Billy to put the fan in his bedroom window so we could circulate some fresh air in the house. Later when Kevin didn't notice any breeze as he should, he went to look at Billy's window only to find the fan whirring away, but the window was closed.

Billy had indeed put the fan in the window, but that was it; he'd taken the instructions very literally.

I know taking everything so literal is a guy thing, and it's not worth my time to worry about it. Still sometimes, I have to wonder what chip in their brain is missing. I'm quite positive that women having to deal with this speeds up our aging process. Thanks for my wrinkles, guys.