My path has crossed a lot of stubborn folks, including my mother-in-law, who honed it to a science; however, including mules, men reign supreme in this area.

My dad, uncles, brothers and others have shown that side of their personalities often. Oh, some women can indeed be bull-headed, but males in general win hands down.

My late husband injured himself once while I was up north taking care of an ill family member. He called me more frequently and seemed overly concerned about my homecoming yet said nothing — nada, zip, zilch — about being injured.

It turns out, he had slid off a riding lawn tractor out in the back forty on a steep slope. It drove over his left leg.

Always and forever rigging broken things up rather than buying replacement parts, the blades continued to turn and the engine no longer shut off independently. He wrestled with the slope, the mower and his injury until he somehow managed to back the mower back over his leg in order to reach it to turn off the engine.

He lay there mustering up the strength to climb back on and drive it near the door of our home.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived about 3 a.m. and it took him almost 10 minutes to show any signs of life. He was not happy — more like Grumpy to use the Seven Dwarfs analogy — and I speak kindly.

He showed me his wound from his hip, groin, thigh, calf, foot and toes. The bruising was downright black.

Asking if anything was broken, he assured me nothing was, but in more than 50 years of marriage, I had never seen him so miserable. He flat-out refused to see a doctor.

Eventually, and very slowly, he began to heal. He walked with a slight limp for more than a year, but heaven forbid he get any relief other than his sacred cow, his all-purpose miracle drug, aspirin.

Recently, a dear friend in another state who has been caregiver for his wife the past four years pulled a similar stunt.

Following a couple of falls, he insisted his wife ring a little bell whenever she wanted to get up, so that he could assist her.

He must have been half asleep, because when she rang the little bell, he literally sprung into action and fell flat himself. I’m pretty sure he has an excuse like blaming the cat or a rug, etc.

Anyway, he fell hard — the jarring kind that unsettles your nerves. He got himself up and painfully hobbled to see what his dear wife needed.

Using a walker to get around the house and even go grocery shopping, he insisted that it was healing.

Yep. He flat denied the depth of the pain and refused to even get an X-ray. Lying to himself as well as everyone else, he insisted it was getting better and that it just needed a little time to fully heal. Assuring everyone it was improving; he just needed to stay off it more to allow it to mend itself. Uh-huh. Sure.

Well, it turns out he wasn’t improving, but rather, it became more painful to walk on, as well as to get in and out of a chair.

Finally, after three and a half weeks, he broke down and asked a family member to drive him to the emergency room. Imagine his surprise when he was told he had a broken hip. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Besides the original break, during the three and a half weeks he was healing, the ball joint failed to obtain blood supply, so it was dead.

The very next day, they did a total hip replacement. His daughter flew in to help care for his wife and lift his spirits. She succeeded at both.

Stubborn much? These two men were beyond stubborn. They were obstinate, unreasonable, inflexible, pigheaded, bullheaded and downright disagreeable.

What they were not is whiny, wimpy, sniveling or complainers. They are examples of a man’s man with the determination, tenacity and fortitude to keep going and refusing to give up.

While the last sentence is admirable, there are times when it is just plain stupid. When you know you are hurt but your pride is more important, it makes you absurdly inept and just plain foolish.

Admittedly, we can all be foolish and stubborn at times, but men bring it to a new level. It’s a genuine challenge to top some of their decisions, tenacity and extreme folly.

We need to teach our boys to be strong, not wimpy, but to temper it with common sense. It may hurt their pride to admit it — but it does no favors for their bodies.