Tag Men

A hair-raising tale

Michael 7 Comments

I’m worried about humanity. Every day I see something more and more stupid than the day before. I don’t think we have a chance. You know what? I misspoke. Or mistyped. Not humanity. Humanity might be getting more stupid every day too, but I really mean men. If men had to promulgate the species by themselves, we’d still be in the Dark Ages. And probably in the dark as well. Especially if those men are, as almost all men will be sometime, starting to thin a little up at the hairline.

Oh my Heavens, you would think the world is coming to an end. As soon as it seems there is just a little creep backwards in the hairline, all aich, ee, double hockey sticks breaks out. “Frick! My hair is falling out! I’m not a man anymore!!” So genius that he is, he shaves his head. “Now it will look like a fashion statement, not that I’m bald.” Yeah, right.

But then, genius that he is, he knows how to use a computer and discovers testosterone is necessary for hair growth. Naturally he makes the connection, no hair means he has no testosterone. No testosterone means he only has his oversized red pick-up truck to prove he’s a man and he can’t take that to bed with him. What will he do?

Now this idiot remembers elementary school math and knows that 2 plus 2 equals something, so he adds them up and comes up with a solution. If he has to have hair to pick up women, then by gosh, he’ll grow some hair. But his head is off limits because he just spent a bazillion dollars on a fancy 17 head rotary razor designed especially for thinning and balding men to recapture their outer beauty by mowing away whatever hair might be left growing out of the top of his head. Next best thing to head hair? That’s right — facial hair! So he grows a beard. And not a sophisticated, well-groomed, trim offering like the debonair George Clooney. Oh no. He does the full on, don’t come near me with a pair of manicure scissors, scraggly, end of the world, manly man’s beard like ZZ and his friend, Top.  

Oddly, he still can’t pick up women, so since he is a genius, his first thought is that his truck isn’t big enough. A reasonable assumption. Everyone knows the larger the truck the more manly the man. Ask any used car dealer. So he goes all out, gets an even bigger, even redder, this time diesel pickup with bigger and shinier wheels and tires too. And takes the mufflers off to make certain his is noticed and not overlooked for some weeny in a Tesla. And he still goes home alone after spending all night at the bar. Now what’s the problem?

When he gets home he looks at himself in the mirror and decides he’d sleep with him if he had a chance. But even genius lunatic that he is, he sees something just doesn’t look right with a ZZ Top beard below a cue ball head. How can we fix that? Right! Get a hat! So the hext day he heads out to the fashion capital of the world, Walmart, and gets a hat. He’d like one with a pick-up on the front so he can double up on his manly man ride, but all he can find is one with a tractor on the front and a bull saying “Who farted?” and buys 3 of them so he’ll never run out. Remember, we are dealing with genius.

So now he has his manly man hat covering up his manly man bald shaved head above his manly man beard and he hops into his manly man truck and scoots on down to the local dive bar looking for a woman who can’t wait to be in the arms of a true manly manly man.

Just one problem. If he should find a female looney enough to match on him, he will have found her thus attired which means he can never ever never remove his hat except to shave his head, so he now goes through life with a hat on his head (a hat that says, “who farted?”) everywhere he goes, including out to fancy dinners, church and school functions, shopping, doctor appointments, job interviews, even when he goes to have his manly man truck cleaned up and made shinier where he can sit in the waiting room and share his manly man wisdom.

So if you ever run across a guy who looks like ZZ Top with a hat on climbing down out of big red manly man pickup truck, don’t try to pick him up. He’s taken. Mostly with himself.   

It makes sense that governments can’t take time to regulate everything in life, thus the unwritten law. But which is more powerful – the unwritten rule, or the desire to pursue life, full steam ahead?

Pantsing Around

Michael 6 Comments

The last couple of days here have been the cold, rainy, dreary, generally not the kind of weather you want to go outside in unless you have to type of days you find when fall really turns into prep days for winter. So I’ve been practicing sitting around and relaxing since most of my days include “don’t go outside unless you have to” on the to do list.

Mostly I’ll read, write, or puzzle something out to bide my time on those inside days. Every so often I’ll turn on the television and see what I might have missed in prime time over the past few years by watching whatever new has hit the late afternoon/early evening syndication runs. I’ve discovered that I’m much too overdressed to be properly relaxed. Apparently the All-American male cannot relax with pants on. I missed that somewhere along the way.

In every sitcom on television today, there is a male character who barely crosses the threshold of his house before taking his pants off. These males range from youngster at the cusp of teendom, to teenager, to young adult, to middle aged parent, to grandfather. They are from struggling, middle class, well to do, and outright rich families from New York across America to California, of a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Their only common denominators are male-ism and being pantsless at home.

This concerns me. I never ran across this behavior in my personal experiences. I have often been in what I would otherwise consider a relaxing situation and I have always kept my pants on. I have observed other men from my own, older, and younger generations, and have never seen any of them kicked back on the sofa in boxers or briefs. Yet our television role models are dropping trou before they clear the front door. And not just in solitude. They do it and stay that way in front of wives, mothers, siblings, offspring, and on several occasions, delivery persons.

Don’t say that they’re only sitcom males and I shouldn’t be taking them seriously. Sitcoms are America. We may want to think that the hour long dramas are where Americans are really at but they aren’t. The dramas may be what we want to believe us to be. We want to be that deep, that inclusive, that concerned with the environment, current causes, and family. But we aren’t. As much as we want to be the Pearsons, deep down we know we’re really the Hecks.

Clearly I’ve been doing it wrong for a lifetime. And I’m afraid that as I’ve gotten this far in my life I’m too old to change and will continue relaxing with all of my clothes on. I know, I’m bucking convention here but I can’t see myself any other way. And I sincerely hope it doesn’t offend any of you to know that as I’m typing this, I’m wearing pants.