I love this passage from an article about raising boys in Wondertime by Jacquelyn Mitchard (I also love Wondertime, and recommend it heartily):
My friends and I came up with an essential test regarding the difference between boys and girls: it’s called the Wet Paint Paradigm. Girls, it seems, can learn from their own experiences and even, occasionally, from others’. However, if a boy sees a sign that says Wet Paint, he’ll touch the wall to determine it’s not a joke, and then his friend – standing right behind him – will have to perform the same test with his own finger. Boys are not dumber than girls. They simply have a rugged and individualistic sense of discovery and wonder, untrammeled by prior evidence.