I’d like to apologize to all of the guys out there who know of me only because I know your wife or girlfriend and she sometimes reads my posts aloud to you. Believe me, I am as distressed by this practice as you are.
I’m distressed for myriad reasons, not the least of which is that I’m a control freak who suspects that she’s not using the right voice or inflection to read my stuff. But my chief distress comes from the fact that a lot of you are secretly (or not so secretly) sick of it. Sure, you humor her. But a lot of you don’t think I’m funny. In fact, some of you have announced that you’re “kind of over this Mike Hamilton guy”. I GET it. I’ve been over this Mike Hamilton guy since that time at summer bible camp when he had explosive diarrhea all over the walls, floor and toilet of the boy’s restroom only seconds before the bell sounded to summon the coed team of his peers to come clean the stall he had just defiled. Talk about a hit and run.
So we can both agree that I suck.
Moreover, this read-aloud-to-dudes-who-are-uninterested thing is distressing to me because it’s another mortifying reminder that I am not like most dudes. I recently sat among a bunch of men at a father-daughter event, expecting that we’d exchange hilarious stories of the trials and tribulations of being a dad. Instead, the vast majority of men around me wanted to talk about laying tile, working with grout (does one lay grout?), negotiating with general contractors, being your own general contractor, and do-it-yourself gutter cleaning (both with and without the use of a ladder). It was the most horrifyingly boring conversation I’ve ever had, except for almost all the other conversations I’ve had with dudes I don’t know.
Sure, some guys find me funny and read my stuff. But it’s usually because they think I’m weird. They look at me the way you might look at a portrait of Napolean, astride a bear, astride another Napolean.
Why am I the way I am? I dunno. It’s like asking Cthulhu why he’s a horrifying being, the sight of whom will rob you of your sanity. He just is.
A friend once told me that reading my stuff “is horrifying” because I talk about kids, and carpools, and trips to Target. “You know,” he said “stuff that chics do.” I’ll skip the feminist critique of that statement and just jump to some jokes about it. Because whether that statement is true or not, one thing is clear: dudes don’t really want to hear about embarrassing trips to Target. Or your toddler stepping on your vasectomy ravaged balls. Or feminist critiques of what they don’t want to hear about.
Though in fairness, these men may just as easily be annoyed by the timing of the reading more than the content. Apparently, some of my women friends choose to read this stuff over dinner, which has GOT to lead to indigestion. And worse, some read at night in bed. I can’t imagine anyone getting laid after something like that. I mean, who can seduce a woman who has explosive diarrhea at bible camp on her mind?
So to the dudes out there who don’t know me but have to listen to me sometimes anyway, I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is alienate you, or ruin your dinner, or diminish the prospects of you wielding your love hammer for three and a half minutes. If I could shut up, I would. And I’ve tried. But the result is kind of like Tigger when he lost his bounce: woeful and pathetic and zero fun.
So thank you for enduring me guys, and I’m sorry. And I promise to write about it if I ever engage in any DIY around the house, or uh . . . spend an ungodly five hours hitting a ball with a crooked stick and then walking after it so I can hit again. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to attend to a tribe of children who are using my dress belts as pretend beaver tails. Or some shit.
Yours, etc.,
JMH