Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Emasculation Station?



While it's amazing how big a role confidence plays in the modern man's attempt to be manly, it's even more amazing how the simplest of circumstances can squeeze that confidence to down to a mushy pulp.

Say, just for example, you've just finished an awesome weekend of manly musical gigs in Omaha, and are preparing for a manly 12 hour overnight drive back to Cincinnati, where your manly football team has just won a manly victory, and you walk into a gas station (= manly) to make a manly purchase. Your confidence is at an all time high. And just for the heck of it, since it's our example, let's say your name is Lucas.

Strolling out of the store, you casually shove up against the door in a manly, cool manner. You have no real time for doors. Your normal walking motion is enough to reduce the door to a swinging pile of gelatinous rubble. But the door does not move. Why has the door suddenly become a more stalwart, powerful object than you? Ah, but you are pushing on the hinge side, where approximately 381 times the normal force is needed.

You find yourself in a quandary. Do you look like a pathetic weakling by throwing all of your apparently not-so-manly might into trying to slowly open that door on the hinge side, or do you make yourself look like the most blithering fool by stopping the door-opening process and restarting on the other side?

Whatever you decide, you can be sure that any opportunity you had to look like Mr. Coolguy McSmoothy-Pants has been shot to hell, and that modestly hot cashier will never go out with you now. Every person in the station and beyond (since it's a glass door) can see your fruitless struggle to open a door that you're pretty sure a pregnant woman half your size just walked through without a thought. The battle has already been lost.

For my part, I choose to look the weakling instead of the fool and continue my hinge-side pushing until blood vessels burst in my eyes. For your part, manly men of the world, attack these confidence mushers in the middle, where the hinges will not affect.

Or just kick that $#!+ open.

3 comments:

  1. Only $0.98 cents a pac?! I'm in!

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  2. When you look at that door, is the first thing you ask yourself, "Could I take it?"

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  3. I believe one Abraham Lincoln addressed this in his 1863 Emasculation Proclamation. To paraphrase: "Kick that $&!# open!."

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