COLUMN:I’m glad to be a man
I love women. Always have. Always will.
That’s not a comment laced with gigolo undertones, and I’m not the type who cavorts around Logan in a smoking jacket/silk bathrobe, wearing a Hugh Hefner-esque grin, puffing on a pipe, whilst surrounded by throngs of silicone-enhanced blonde airshells.
Rather, my aforementioned statement is simply this: The presence of women on this planet is a God-send of peace and stability. Without them, men would be clubbing each other with steaks and remote controls, filling outdoor pools with beer and be 600-pound globs of hollow, insignificant brain matter, mumbling football terms and drooling over re-runs of The A-Team and Gilligan’s Island. Furthermore, I am entirely supportive of a woman’s right to choose, equality in the workforce and anything else that brings the female populace up to par, if not past, their male counterparts.
With that said, let me affirm, I am so happy to be a man.
This dawned on me the other day while getting dressed for work. I was slipping my belt through the last loop in my jeans when I heard a guttural, from-the-depths-of-hell snarl reverberating from the bathroom. I thought perhaps the devil had erupted from the toilet; however, it was only my wife, lamenting and sighing over the complexities of fixing her hair.
“What’s the problem,” I said.
Her head actually did a full 360-degree turn when I uttered those words and she proceeded to emit another unintelligible mix of swear words and gurgling sighs from the bowels of a place, I’m beginning to believe, only exists in women.
“My hair won’t fix,” she said, and shut the door, as though my questioning gaze might affect the process of picking, brushing, curling and then spraying of her hair, with two and one-half gallons of hairspray, I might add.
As a man, I’m glad seven seconds of water, a quarter-sized drop of hair gel and two or three strokes of my fingers can mold my hair into an acceptable societal norm. I can’t imagine spending one-half hour coifing my hair. That in and of itself is reason for thousands of women to lament the fact they are not a man.
Here are some other reasons.
Three letters – PMS. If you are a man and have no idea what those letters represent, you need to get out of the house and start dating. The least important of the letters are the “m” and the “s,” which stand for menstrual syndrome (not to be confused with “minstrel syndrome” which denotes an obsession with Gordon Lightfoot), but rather the foremost letter is the “p.” It stands for pre, present and post, which equal the inherent crankiness in all females all the time. This increases after – and I’m talking the minute after – you get married, so be forewarned. To women reading this article, be assured, men would never be able to handle one round with PMS. We cry and lay on the bathroom floor when an irritating wave of diarrhea befalls our bodies, so PMS would send all males into a coma.
Childbirth is another reason to praise your gender selection as a man. Trust me, as a father of one, pregnancy is not physically difficult for a man. Sure, it can be mentally straining and there are the late-night runs to the grocery store for Copy Ed 10/2/01 Spelling? Haagan-Daaz ice cream and pickles, but men don’t have to feel the baby head-butt their ribs, get hemorrhoids or be poked and prodded in the nether regions by a cold-handed doctor. I asked the teacher of our pre-natal class what it was like to have a baby, she said, “Have you ever stuck an umbrella up your butt and opened it?” I think that says it all.
The list could go on and on (with wearing a bra, makeup, nylons and high heels being the next-up to childbirth and PMS), but I’ll forebear and restate my original thought.
I love women. Always have. Always will.
I have two sisters and a mother, who, aside from their endless persecutions, made me slightly sensitive to what a woman goes through every day. Right now I live with my wife and daughter (that could change after this is published), and they are strong, intelligent, breathtaking and beautiful, in every possible sense of the word. But I suppose that is like every woman you and I meet every day. They are bastions of indomitable endurance, shrewdness, harmony and love. The world cannot function without their presence and men everywhere should treat them better and strive to promote their equality.
I’ll start tomorrow. When my wife is doing her hair.