 I've made mention before but it bears repeating that I am a man in only the most basic definition of the word. By that I mean that I proudly possess a Y chromosome, a penis and the occasional bits of stubble on my face. Beyond that, I would be hard pressed to identify with the societal expectation of what knowledge and skill sets should be at my disposal.
Sports
This is a subject that dudes are supposed to know about. Not only know about, but follow closely, talk at length about and sound like they know what they're saying when they scream at a television. I enjoy baseball, but when it comes to the others like Football, basketball or hockey, I've found that I've developed a certain survival skill when these subjects come up in conversation- I fake it.
Someone will say something to me like, "The Colts committed two
penalties for 15 yards in the fourth quarter and allowed three sacks,
two of which resulted in fumbles and one of which was recovered by the
Patriots inside the final three minutes! Can you believe that shit?"
Me: I guess the Colts just wanted it more.
Them: What do you mean? The Colts lost.
Me: Oh sure, they LOST, but did you see how disappointed they were? You could tell they really wanted it.
Strip Clubs
Don't get these. Never felt comfortable in one. I can never get
over the fact that there's a naked lady talking to me. The few times
it's happened it usually plays out something like this...
Stripper: So, Handsome... what do you do?
Me: I'm sorry, but do you KNOW that you're naked right now?
Stripper: Yes. It's what I do. Now what do YOU do?
I then start giggling uncontrollably until the poor girl walks away in disgust.
Car Repairs
As a boy, I had male figures in my life that made a real effort to
impart this knowledge to me. A shrug and a bored expression was all
they got for their troubles.
The result of this is that if I were starving to death and someone
showed me the engine of a car, handed me a toolbox and let me know that
there was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the intake manifold and
left me to rescue myself, they would later find my corpse with a belt
sander in one hand, a claw hammer in the other and a puzzled look on my
gray, emaciated face.
I recently changed a tire on a car. I was pretty proud, but the
truth is that I had to consult the manual no less than twelve times and
when the job was complete, I looked as though I had spent the better
part of a week working in a West Virginia coal mine.
Now that you have the background, here's the story.
Last weekend my wife and I went to a lake house owned by my mother
and my stepfather. It's a great house, but it's a fixer-upper. They
asked us to come down and help with the fixing and we reluctantly
agreed.
You should know that my stepfather is ridiculously adept at this
kind of thing. He is a Master Electrician, a Master Carpenter and a
Master Plumber. He is also a Master of screaming at people who are not
all of these things.
I, on the other hand, am easily capable of naming all of the actors
and characters in the John Hughes catalogue (I secretly believe that
my stepfather is not impressed by this ability).
The first task I was assigned was to take recently demolished
materials to a dumpster. I don't like to brag, but I was pretty good at
it. If you tell me to take large pieces of wood and sheet rock and put
them in a dumpster, I'm not likely to screw it up too bad. I think that
if this activity were an Olympic event, I could at least qualify as an
alternate on the U.S. team.
Then things went very bad. My stepfather assumed that I would be
reasonably able to take up floor tile. He demonstrated the correct way
to take up the tile using a tool that resembles a small jackhammer. I
don't remember the name of the tool, but I ruefully dubbed it the
Scrotum Rattler. He handed the tool to me and I began to wield it with
all the skill and precision of a toddler with an M-16. He watched me
for about 30 seconds before calmly and wordlessly taking the tool out
of my hands and proceeding to finish the job himself.
I went happily back to throwing trash in a dumpster.
An hour later, he needed my help with something else. He and
another man were going to attach a large cabinet to a wall at a point
where the wall met the ceiling. It was a large pre-assembled cabinet
that looked like it weighed about one Honda. It was decided that the
two of them would lift the cabinet while I stood at the ready to fetch
whatever tools or accoutrements they might need.
As they hoisted the giant thing up and groaned under its weight,
my stepfather said to me through clenched teeth, "Matt, go to my truck
and get the Number 48 Fizzagig now, or this things gonna fall and crush
us!"
I remember feeling sad as I had grown fond of them both and I
thought about how tragic it was going to be that their lives should end
simply because I had no clue what the fuck he was talking about.
(I don't think he actually said the word "Fizzagig." I just use
that to illustrate that whatever word he did say made about as much
sense to me as that word does to you.)
They set the thing down and he went to get whatever mystical tool
it was that he needed. They then hoisted it up again and my stepfather
said to me with a purple hue on his face, "Matt, go get us some screws
from the screw box! Yes, I said 'screw box' now stop giggling and go
get them!"
I scurried to the screw box and when I opened it there were, no
shit, a million different types of screws. I scanned them helplessly and
braced for the verbal barrage.
Stepdad: Did you get the fucking screws?
Me: Ummm... what color do you want?
I could hear the cabinet being lowered in disgust. I happily went back to throwing things in the dumpster.
As I marched up to the dumpster with yet another load in my arms,
something happened. I stepped on a board. A board that had a nail
sticking up through it. A nail that went through the sole of my shoe
and straight up into my foot.
Remember that scene in Braveheart when they rip his genitals off and he screams? That's the sound I made exactly.
The women that were there threw up their hands and screamed and
did everything short of calling the National Guard. The men just shook
their heads and looked at me with a mixture of pity and amusement.
24 hours, a crushed ego, and a $52 tetanus shot later, I sat on my
couch and watched an Ultimate Fighting match to try to repair some of
the damage. You know something? It didn't really help. It was just one
more guy thing that I'll never be good at.
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