GAIL WHITE The mayhem of the male mind: It starts early

Over the weekend, I found myself tired one afternoon. The baby was napping, my husband was outside and the boys were playing. I decided to lie down and take a nap as well.
As I was lying on my bed, very close to wonderful sleep, I heard a ruckus coming from the family room. As it continued, I tried to determine what was going on. Someone bouncing off the walls was the only way to describe the noise.
I got out of bed, quietly opened the door and peered into the room.
I was right. Someone was bouncing off the walls.
My 7-year-old son, Andrew, was jumping off the couch, rolling across the floor, crawling on his belly, running to the other side of the room and back to the couch to jump off again. All the while, he was shooting an invisible gun at an invisible enemy and whispering in feverish tones to invisible comrades.
I stood and stared in utter amazement. Was I insane to think he was insane? Or was there something out there that I just couldn't see?
As a child, I remember having tea parties and talking to stuffed animals. As a parent, I often feel like I am talking to myself -- even so, my inattentive audience has faces and names.
I have never quite experienced an all-out, full-fledged invisible war before.
But then, I am not male.
Amazed: What a difference a few chromosomes make!
I have long-since given up trying to figure out the opposite sex. Yet, I never cease to be amazed by them.
Why are they so fascinated by every disgusting bodily emission? Why can't they simply "play nice?" And why do they look so completely helpless and pitiful when a woman cries?
Examples: With a house full of these peculiar creatures cooped up all winter, I was looking forward to spring (when children play outside). Then, my friend, Carla Sukosd of Columbiana, e-mailed me with some of the antics that these "peculiar creatures" engaged in last summer on her side of town.
"We have a whole slew of boys in our neighborhood," she wrote. "Their shenanigans began last spring when our neighbor, a local pastor, came home one day to find a group of boys running in different directions at his appearance. In the center, two boys stomping out smoldering leaves.
"Then there was the afternoon I saw a father taking a pocket knife away from one of the neighborhood boys," she continued.
"One evening, I was sitting on my front porch, when the boys decided to toss a plastic glow-in-the-dark star across our busy street to one another. Before I found my voice, the star became lodged in one of their backs. (And we thought the knife would be the end of them!)
"Then, there was the day that my daughter came running into the house screaming something about someone holding their face. I went out to discover four boys going down our sliding board -- on skateboards. Apparently, one of them had been stopped by his face smashing against our garage wall.
"I think the clincher was the night I got a phone call with the story that one of the boys took his brother's BB gun and began a game of 'Let's-see-how-close-I-can-come-to-shooting-you-without-actually-doing-it.' "
Carla is as confused as I am about this kind of behavior. "My daughter has never gotten into trouble like this. She's not exactly quiet, but she's not violent!" she said, referring to the time her son turned his sister's Barbie into a nuclear missile.
"A few bricks shy of a load" is how Carla described them.
Never change: I question whether the "full load" ever occurs. Boys may grow to men, but their way of thinking never seems to change.
One of the editors of this newspaper told me a story of how he once took his daughter shopping for school clothes and came home with a ferret. No clothes.
How does this happen?
Too many invisible wars (or glow-in-the-dark stars), I suspect.