As a male, Ive never understood the grandiose way some men glare and gawk at women. On Tuesday night, I came to a stop sign. Coming from my right ever so slowly just creeping along — was a pickup. The other man had the right of way. Crossing the street on his right and parallel to him was a fairly average-looking young woman. The rubberneck driver, a Hispanic man, kept his eyes on that woman continuously as he slowly came even with her and then passed by her. It was only after she was far behind him that he looked ahead and then over toward my stopped vehicle, offering a well-a-guys-gotta-look shrug. His sluggish truck then picked up speed. So, was his ostentatious behavior a matter of giving that woman a true compliment by his undivided attention? Was he just manifesting a common cultural behavior? Was he rude, or should my reaction be disregarded as culturally insensitive? Was I, now married almost 34 years, just brain dead?It got me thinking of my days in South America during the 1960s. On three different group trips there, I became keenly aware of the serious practices of girl-watching. Whole groups of males whether workers at a construction site, men standing and talking together or male students lounging around collectively craned their necks to follow passing women and hurl catcalls. I first discovered the phenomenon during a summer in Uruguay with some American students in a YMCA work project.But it was more dramatic the summer of 1968 while I lived and worked in the southern Ecuadorian city of Loja where I lived in the home of the parents of the local newspaper publisher. For seven days a week for six weeks, I was given the rare chance to write a 1,200-word Spanish column, starting on the front page, called Un Visitante en Loja. We were five Iowa State University students (I had just graduated in journalism) working for the summer in our fields of training. The only other male was John Foreman, retired longtime Maricopa County Superior Court judge. His fiance and now wife, Sandy, a blonde, was another of our group.The blondes stood out on those Ecuador streets. Rubia! (blonde) was their constant shout as we walked down streets. The stares and glowering were relentless. But I got a lesson in culture just seeing how any of the three women were the focus of gawkers. About 10 years later, I sat in Campeche, Mexico, where I had a month-long newspaper fellowship to study news operations under the auspices of the World Press Freedom Committee and other sponsors. I chatted with the mother of a Campeche exchange student who had previously come to stay most of a year with us in Iowa. We talked about male habits in her city, and she asserted that men just naturally run free and that unfaithfulness was to be expected. She said it was culturally ingrained across generations. There was a fatalism about it.Oddly, the same thing had been told to me by a young Uruguayan teen I met in Uruguay in 1967 and fell in love with. Nahir, then 18, had just returned from a Youth for Understanding exchange program in Muncie, Ind. She knew five languages. I would correspond with her my last year of college. And that following summer, I took those last two weeks of my Ecuadorian trip to go to Uruguay to renew our relationship. But it dissolved not long after I was accepted to the Peace Corps for assignment in Paraguay, up river, and I never saw her after that. Nahir later married and had a son. Her husband died in a car accident and her son died of meningitis. She remarried, had a son, Rodrigo, and they moved to Rockford, Ill., where she became a language teacher in a middle school. Across those years, I had a couple phone visits with her, brief and cordial. In no way did I want to suggest a revival of old interests. A few days ago, I had the notion to Google her name online. I found it. It had appeared in a Uruguayan newspaper. It was an obituary. Nahir had died on Sept. 6, 2004, in Rockford. It led me to the Rockford newspaper and a death notice that she had died of cancer with her family by her side. She was 55 and had taught at her school for 10 years. She certainly must have been a remarkable teacher.I often tell people that everyone, early in their lives, ought to fall in love with someone from another country, another culture. It can leave a valuable mark on ones humanity and heart. Of course, I have no regrets that the love of my life, Patty, crossed my newsman path in 1972 and we married a year later. I have been blessed beyond words by what enfolded. I know loves grandeur in our faithfulness, our two grown children, two granddaughters, and our travels and adventures together.

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