A married couple who are friends of mine were discussing the fact that the husband takes things home and never does anything with them, let alone throw them out.

His collection includes a slab of wood stenciled “.50 Caliber” from the former Kelly-Springfield Tire Company plant — a holdover from World War II, when the factory made ammunition. He’s also harvested an old brass fire hose nozzle; the hose itself was rotted and unsalvageable.

“We’ve moved twice, and these things have gone with us both times,” she told me. “They’re all packed up, and they’ve never been out of the boxes. I keep after him to at least open them and see what’s in them, but he won’t.” One box has remained sealed since 1968.

“If I do that, you’ll just want to throw stuff away,” he said, “and I want to keep it.”

When she said it was difficult to teach her husband new things, I decided to be helpful and explain why that’s so:

Men don’t have what might be called a Normal Learning Phase. This simply means that for the most part, we don’t learn as we go. The first part of a man’s life is marked by a Stupid Phase, which moderates into a Failure to Learn Phase that lasts until he gets married.

Marriage sparks a Brief But Intense Learning Phase in the average man. Most wives don’t realize this, because it’s accompanied by a simultaneous Don’t Let Her Find Out That You Know Phase that involves men learning things their wives don’t want them to learn.

As Bill Cosby said, men learn not to do anything well the first time they try it — like taking out the garbage — unless they want to have to do it happily ever after. Some men I know have learned that if they call their wives to report they’ll be late getting home, they’ll just catch hell twice.

After the Brief But Intense Learning Phase ends, there comes a Nonlearning Phase that’s followed by a Set in His Ways Phase, a Conveniently Forgetting Phase and an I’m Old Enough Now That I Don’t Have To Give A Damn What You Think Phase that usually is terminal.

Part of the problem is that men and women don’t communicate well, and this has nothing to do with that nonsense in which lovers claim to be able to finish the sentences their partners start. They tell their friends in awe-stricken tones, “It’s scary ... almost like we’re reading each other’s minds.”

That’s a load of (what was left after Ferdinand moved to another part of the pasture). My father and I got to be like that, simply because we were around each other for 55 years. I might add that for as much as we loved her, neither of us was able to read my mother’s mind.

Men and women don’t think alike. Period. This is inarguable. Part of the proof is that simple words which mean one thing to the man can mean something entirely different to the woman.

Take “carat” and “carrot.” Doesn’t matter that they’re spelled differently, they’re pronounced the same. When a man hears this word, he associates it with the root vegetable Bugs munches while he’s asking Elmer what’s up. A woman hears the same word and interprets it as, “He went to Jared!”

When a woman I used to date asked me about my “outfit,” I said, “Outfit? What outfit? I wasn’t in the service.”

She said, “I mean your golf outfit. Your outfit that you wear to play golf.”

I told her that I wear clothes, not an outfit. What I grab out of the closet is what I put on. The process by which a woman assembles her daily outfit is one I’ve heard described as “choosing a look.” The only reason “choosing a look” has stuck in my mind is that I have never been able to associate it with anything a man does.

A lady friend of mine was telling some of us about a card game she likes. I’d never heard of it, with what turned out to be good reason.

“All you have to do is play,” she said. “It’s not like bridge or anything else. You don’t have to think about what you’re doing. You can just sit there and talk all you want, while you’re playing.”

Sounds to me, I said, like a game most men wouldn’t care for.

“Men hate it,” she said, “but women love it. We can talk and socialize all we want.”

That’s not why men play cards. Men play cards so they can look at the other guy with a straight face, thinking, “Go ahead and call me, you (four-word Anglo-Saxonism). Raise me, and see what happens. I know you don’t have that third bullet (ace) because Harry folded one, and I’ve got the other in the hole to fill out the flush you don’t think I made.”

My friend also said she might have her old bicycle cleaned up and make a yard decoration out of it.

“Aren’t the wheels broken?” another woman asked.

“I’m not planning on riding it,” she said. Another man and I glanced at each other and shook our heads as imperceptibly as possible.

Some of my former girlfriends have been yard-and-garden types who offered me the opportunity to become involved — invitations I accepted for reasons that should be obvious. I’ve dug plenty of holes when it comes to the women in my life, literally and figuratively.

When one of my old loves tried to tell me about her “water feature,” I was unfamiliar with the term and had to ask what she was talking about. She said it was set up next to the back porch steps, and we’d just walked past it.

“Oh,” I said, “you mean the old washtub with the water pump and the plastic frog in it?”

Just call it a spadeful of dirt tossed onto the coffin lid of that relationship.