So, dear single readers, keep on talking to yourselves. You never know who you might trample.
First Person: For my first trick, a hobby
March 24, 2013
The question will come. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but it will come. And it’s a question so hurtful, vile and unmerciful that only friends dare ask it.
“So, what’d you do this weekend?”
I will be seized by rapid memory loss. I will stall for time. My concession speech will be three words.
“I don’t remember.”
Later, I do remember. I did laundry, loaded the dishwasher with my signature cramming, and watched re-runs of “Pawn Stars” because Chumlee is the greatest. On Sunday I dealt with my sock drawer, where I unearthed an old cigar cutter. I don’t smoke cigars, but maybe I should.
I need manly hobbies to tell anyone daring to pry into my understated lifestyle.
“My weekend? The usual. I finished my ballroom dancing lessons on Saturday morning. In the afternoon, I whittled an armoire for the little lady, who requested I cease and desist whittling and calling her “little lady.” Sunday morning, I opened a chain of quality soup kitchens, rebuilt a ‘58 Chevy engine (it wasn’t my Chevy but the puzzled guy’s next door). Later, while renovating the second bathroom, I accidentally spackled the dog. We had a good laugh over that, as we smoked cigars and played chess. My dog is lousy at chess, but he cuts a mean cigar.”
Somewhere there’s a healthy, fulfilling medium on the Male Hobby Spectrum.
Somewhere.
As of Spring 2013, my list of perceptible hobbies features:
Checking the doors at night to see if they’re locked.
SDM: Seasonal Disorder Moping.
Trespassing in a nearby cornfield with my dog Earle, where he chases low-flying Canada Geese (unlike people, dogs know when to give up the chase), and where he eats deer hooves.
Deer-munching—now that’s a manly hobby. Why don’t I roam tilled cornfields and forage for downed mammals? Imagine the savings from never eating out again. Oh, but I can hear the naysayers: Man is not meant to devour festering, raw deer hooves.
Which leads me to a site called “The Art of Manliness,” which lists 45 more traditional hobbies for my consideration:
1 Ham radio (and its less popular sister hobby, Head Cheese radio).
2 Wood working. “When you’re taking a chisel to a piece of wood, it’s easy to enter a zen-like state” or a zen-like emergency room.
3 Reading. I’ve heard of this.
4 Backpacking. No, no.
5 Cooking. (See: Backpacking.)
6 Fly fishing. I know a lot of men fly fish and wade in lovely streams and wear long-sleeved, pricey clothes and tie flies. (How do they get the little fellas to sit still?) But fly fishing seems like a little something I like to call “work.”
7 Paintball. I don’t know what this means.
8 Magic. “Every man,” the site says, “should know at least a couple of good magic tricks to impress friends, woo ladies, and delight children.”
For my first trick, I will make the dishwasher load itself, as I roam cornfields and never give up the chase.
When the water hits the fan
April 6, 2014
I keep in my head and in notebooks a rag-tag team of sayings that have kept me company over the years—words from friends, actors, poets, licensed plumbers.
“Young men should travel, if but to amuse themselves.”
“Humor is just anger in a pretty dress.”
“Relationships are never over—they’re just over there.”
There’s another saying, which will define my April.
“Water wins.”
My basement flooded last week, and I’m sticking to this story:
Spring, that liar, told me to turn on the outside faucets so I may soon water all the dead stuff in my yard. In my basement, I reached up into the dropped ceiling whereby I was showered by insect remains. Shaken, I still managed to turn on the valve that allows water to flow to the outdoor faucet.
A day or two later—let’s say three days—I descended into my basement. It smelled like an overturned ark—or old feet. Apparently, a rare indoor typhoon had hit the room—or a frozen pipe burst (I’m no expert, so I can’t definitively rule out a typhoon).
Among the damaged goods: drywall, ceiling, carpet, treadmill, my soul, a framed movie poster of “Young Frankenstein,” sofas, chairs and a T-shirt I left down there circa 2011.
Because I’m slow to process bad news, I pondered the situation for a week. In the interim, the damage did not cure itself. I had to take action, which in my line of DNA, is easier said that acted.
I made a few calls, which promptly set into motion a stage of life anthropologists have long since called “The Coming of Men Into the Home.” Usually in the morning they came. In large colorful trucks these water mitigators came. I lead them to the basement and got the hell out of their way.
I’ve never experienced dehumidifier envy before, but buddy, I got it now. After gutting and ripping and slashing out property parts, the water mitigator men placed three magnificent dehumidifiers on the bare floor. They took aim at whatever was soaked and exposed because although water does win, one must still put up a fight.
The best part was the Dexter-like plastic sheet (with a cool blue zipper) they used to cordon the chunk of ruined basement. It’s been the first thing I do when I get home: I scamper to the basement, open the zipper, stick my head in the room, and stare at the dehumidifiers. I don’t know at what point a quirk becomes a troubling hobby, but I’m closing in.
For five days, the water mitigator men have come to my home. I hear them unzip the sheet, and I wonder what they see when they look into the dead room.
After five visits, I’m told their time is up. They will visit one final time to remove the magnificent dehumidifiers and cool blue zipper. Soon, other men with financial ties to basement flooding will come to the home. But they won’t be the water mitigator men.
You never know who you’ll miss, do you?
And darkness fell upon us
November 3, 2013
And there came upon the land a period of darkness, and the darkness had a name—the Red Sox Nation—and we entered this darkness against our will but with strength of heart and conviction.
And today there came upon the land additional darkness, and the darkness also had a name—the Time of Lost Daylight—and we entered this darkness also against our will but with equal strength and conviction.
Certain men have always dreaded the Time of Lost Daylight—the darkened commute, the deprivation of one hour of sun-fed life, the sudden, psychotic temper tantrum because the TV remote needs Triple AAA batteries and there aren’t any in that cramped kitchen drawer but there are, for some sick reason, three unopened packs of Double AA batteries no one living will ever need.
These strong, wonderful men aren’t alone.
For in our land millions of such people suffer from that which is named seasonal affective disorder—or what our elders less clinically referred to as “being a Mr. Cranky Pants.”
In the Time Before—the Time of Daylight Saving ... (I know, you want to say Daylight Savings, which sounds like the