When I was in high school I would sit at a diner for hours with friends, talking about how we were all going to become great artists, and follow our hearts, and change the world when we got older. Growing up in a small town a few hundred miles east of the center of the United States we believed it.
Step One: Graduate high school. Step Two: Go to college in order to pursue higher learning, but more importantly escape the town we lived in. Step Three: Get it all figured out; find a professor like Robin Williams in the Dead Poet's Society, or Laurence Fishburne in Higher Learning that will push us to the brink of ourselves, driving us to be better than we ever thought. Step Four: Graduate college, and change the world with our mere presence.
Sadly, real life seldom works out like the movies, and we were lucky if we completed Step 2, and it was considered a miracle if we even found a professor that took an interest as a person and not just another name on the roster.
Step Four is the crux of our current anomie. We all thought we would change the world, but forgot that we would have to grow up, get jobs, and fund the revolution we so greatly wanted to be a part of, because the revolution, if there is to be one, will be televised...and facebooked, and twittered, and blogged. We have so many methods of having ourselves heard, but so few of us have a voice to speak from.
What I forgot to include in my plan for world changing excellence was the idea that one day, I would be viewed by outsiders as "a man". Paraquoting the comedian, Joe Rogan, "One day you go to the grocery store, and the bag boy asks, 'Can I help you with your bags, sir?' You look around, 'Oh shit! Are you talking to me? I'm 'sir'? Oh if I'm 'sir' we are certainly fucked."
The way I see it, I am still a 26 year old dude, who happened to marry his best friend, and thus, avoid growing up. She still completes quotes from stand up comedians with me, still road trips with me, and still drinks too much coffee with me.
Don't get me wrong, I definitely know that I am no longer a boy, I can pay my bills on time, do my own laundry, and if worse came to worse I could probably change my own oil. That said, I am, most certainly, not a "Man". I don't mean that as a put down about the evils of corporate America "Man", I mean the "man" you could call to build a deck for you house, give you sound financial advice, rebuild your engine, all while keeping a pipe of tobacco lit between his teeth "Man".
I am, in my opinion, a dude. I got stuck somewhere in college. I can just get by.
Recently, I was in a car accident, nothing major, but my car was totaled. This led to a quick revelation, "My wife deserves a man." We are in our late 20s, both working part time jobs (although in the current economy, any job is good), we have no health insurance, no life insurance, and I don't know how to do anything of note.
This is my journey to rectify that.
If anyone knew how to be Men it is the generations of the late 19th through the mid-20th centuries. I don't mean to say that the times themselves were better, but I think there is a lot to be learned. They wore hats, carried canes, and had manners. They made alcohol in their bathtubs, and knew how to work on their cars. Men of previous generations knew how to respect someone, and how to put them in their place with a good verbal jab. They knew why to put down their coats over a puddle for a lady, and what to do with that coat after the woman crossed over. They are the generations that survived the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and two World Wars.
If I want to see a "Man" when I look in the mirror, I need to take some notes, and aquire some life skills.
(Coming Next: Nothing makes you feel more bad ass, or tests your patience more, than shaving with a straight razor)
Our Favorite Bowls of Hot Soup in Seattle
2 days ago
Great stuff. I think though, regarding the issue of communication, that the bottleneck is on the listening, rather than the speaking-out end of the equation.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'd be interested on what a modern-day woman believes is the pinnacle of womanhood. Methinks that is a complicated question.
But I agree with you. I don't live in the same way as yourself, but I wouldn't call myself a "Man" in the sense you're using either. It's a bit of nostalgia, yes. It's a bit of "gilded age" thinking, yes. But it also expresses so clearly an overall lack of---we'll say manners.
A woman of a certain age was ahead of me in line at the library. She had lots of books and obviously couldn't carry them all without difficulty. When I offered to help her, by my honor this is true, she thought I was joking. When I did carry them out for her, she was flabbergasted. I think it's lucky I wasn't wearing a hat, for had I doffed it, she'd have fallen over apoplectic.
Good on ya', Mr. Gideon.