by Dave Barry
To be sure that this was typical guy-golfer behavior, I discussed this incident with a friend of mine named Bill Rose, who is an editor at The Miami Herald and an avid golfer, not in that order.
I explained the setup to Bill and asked him to assume he was playing golf in a foursome several holes behind the deceased.
“Would you have played through?”
“This guy is not a close friend, right?” asked Bill.
“Right,” I said. “So do you skip the sixteenth?”
“He’s lying on the green?” asked Bill, considering how he might play through a situation like that.
“Yes,” I said.
“I guess I’d have to skip the hole,” he said.
And even though it was a hypothetical hole, there was real pain in his voice.
Thus far in this chapter on Guys in Action I’ve focused on the actions of guys other than myself. Modesty has prevented me from noting that I, too, have demonstrated great decisiveness and courage on several occasions, including a hurricane. And I am not referring here to a previously videotaped hurricane such as Wally saved Lynne from. I am referring to an actual hurricane, named Andrew, which whomped South Florida in 1992 (perhaps you heard about it).
As soon as it was clear that Andrew was headed our way, hordes of people raced to the supermarket to stand in line for hours trying to buy emergency supplies, such as bleach. I have no idea why bleach is such a vital thing to have; all I know is, every time there’s a hurricane threat, the helpful radio announcers, who are probably getting huge kickbacks from the bleach industry, urge everybody to get some, and it sells like crazy. In the mounting panic of a prehurricane situation, you find yourself blindly doing whatever the radio announcers tell you. They could tell you that your emergency hurricane supplies should include a dozen long-stemmed red roses, and within minutes you’d be part of the crazed mob at the florist’s, climbing over the bodies of weaker consumers.
Anyway, the helpful radio announcers also stressed that it was vital to clear the yard of “all debris and loose objects.” That was pretty comical advice, since all a yard is, basically, is debris and loose objects. In fact, a good definition of the whole universe would be, “a collection of debris and loose objects.” Not that this would cut any ice with the helpful radio announcers. They were adamant about loose objects. They were saying helpful things like: “A single grass clipping, propelled by hurricane-force winds, can become a deadly missile that will penetrate your skull and slice your brain into coleslaw.”6
With this helpful information echoing in my mind, I spent the morning rushing around gathering yard debris and putting it in the garage, to insure that, once the storm was over, there would be a nice stockpile of undamaged debris on hand. Then I got to worrying about plywood.
“You must get plywood,” the helpful radio announcers stressed. “It is absolutely essential that you have plywood and there is none available—hahahahahahaha.”
They were right. I drove around to lumber stores, and they were all sold out. I saw a lot of guys who had found plywood; they were driving past me, with sheets of it tied on top of their cars. When I got home, I saw that guys in my own neighborhood had plywood. And I had nothing. It was terrible. It was the worst plywood envy I ever had in my life. I wanted plywood so bad I could taste it.7
And then I thought to myself: Suppose I got some plywood: What the hell would I do with it? I have no idea how to attach plywood to a house. Every house I have ever lived in was already assembled when I moved in. I would probably have just leaned my plywood up against the outside walls. (Actually, as Andrew proved, many South Florida homes were constructed via this very economical technique.)
So as darkness came and the wind started picking up, we left our unplywooded house and went to spend the night in the home of some neighbors, Steele and Bobette Reeder. Steele had some plywood, which he had nailed over the windows of their master bedroom, thus forming a snug, airtight environment for several families. Tragically, it also formed a snug, airtight environment for the Reeders’ dog, Prince.
Here is a tip for anybody who owns a dog and is planning to go through a hurricane in a confined space: Leave the dog outside. I don’t care if this dog has saved your life on several occasions: You will not want to be in the same room with it, because apparently the extreme low barometric pressure associated with a hurricane causes some kind of major disturbance to occur in the dog’s digestive system, thereby vastly increasing its output. Even in the best of circumstances, dogs tend to be flatulent, but during Hurricane Andrew, Prince became the Chernobyl Runaway Nuclear Reactor of Farts. There was a visible dog-fart haze in the room. We seriously considered removing some plywood and opening a window, even though the wind was blowing at 160 miles per hour.
But then we had bigger issues to worry about, such as whether the Reeders’ house was going to remain standing, which at times we sincerely doubted. People have since asked me: What’s it like to be in a hurricane? The answer—and here I will draw upon all my skill and power as a professional wordsmith to enable you to experience, as if firsthand, what this experience feels like—is that it is no fun. There were children there, and they were crying, and the wind was roaring, and Prince was farting, and trees were crashing down outside, and large items were hurtling through the air, and the house was creaking and vibrating and thrashing and groaning as though it was trying to give birth to another house of approximately the same size and weight.
There were three guys in that bedroom—Steele, another neighbor named Olin McKenzie III, and I—and all eyes were upon us, and these eyes were clearly saying: Is everything going to be okay?
And so we did what guys do in a situation like this: We decided to Take a Look.
Taking a look is basic guy behavior, as basic as refusing to ask directions. When a car breaks down, for example, most women will generally accept the fact that they know nothing about modern automobile engines, so rather than waste time looking at it, they’ll take it to a mechanic. Not a guy. A guy will want to open that hood up and frown at that engine in a thoughtful manner, as though he has some remote clue as to what he is seeing, which he does not. I do this myself. I have no idea what to look for when I lift the hood. Maybe I’m hoping that there will be something really obvious, such as a squid clinging to the manifold.
“Here’s the problem right here,” I could then say. “There’s a squid on the manifold.”
But it’s never obvious to me. I don’t even know which one the “manifold” is. This does not, however, stop me from taking a look. I have taken looks at plumbing problems, electrical problems, construction problems, and computer problems that are light-years beyond my comprehension. If alien beings were forced to land in my driveway because they were having problems with the neutron vector transmaterialization module on their warp drive, I would stride over and take a look.
“Maybe it’s flooded,” I would suggest, to let the aliens know the caliber of guy they were dealing with.
All guys do this. Ask yourself: What’s the first thing the president of the United States does when there’s a natural disaster such as a flood? He hops into a helicopter, forms a frowny face, and takes a look at the affected area. Why? What does he expect to accomplish up there? Does he expect to notice something that everybody else missed? (“Hey look! There’s a whole bunch of water!”)
But the president is a guy—especially our current president—and he has to take a look, and it is for the same reason that Steele, Olin, and I, with the anxious eyes of women and children and Prince the multiple-farting dog upon us, knew that we had to go take a look at the hurricane. We went out the bedroom door, closing it quickly behind us, and stood in the hall. The wind was shrieking out there, and the scary house sounds were much louder, and we could see why: A section of the front wall had become disconnected from the roof, and was bulging and leaning in, as though a giant hand were pushing it.
We guys took a look at this. Then we looked at each other and said, pretty
much simultaneously, “Oh, shit.” Then we propped a bunch of stuff against the front door and the wall. We did this very nervously, because the wall kept groaning and bulging as though it were about to burst in and convert whoever was standing in front of it into Instant Human Lasagna. We’d skitter over and prop, say, a ladder against it, then we’d skitter away. We also—this is true—stuck a pair of skis there.
HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS TIP
Always keep a pair of skis where you can get to them quickly in case of emergency.
Then we darted back into the bedroom and closed the door and looked as relaxed as possible considering that the only reason we hadn’t peed our pants was that we were too scared.
“It’s okay!” we announced. “Nothing to worry about!” Guys in control of a situation.
Then we made eye contact with each other in such a manner as to convey the following information: Oh, shit.
But everything worked out. The Reeders’ house did not fall down. (I credit the skis.) In the morning, when the wind finally eased up, I made my way back through the downed trees and power lines to my own house, which had pretty much disappeared under a mound of new debris and loose objects. Looking back on it, I realize that this would have been a good time to drink the bleach.
My point is that guys are not merely shallow, childish, irresponsible, unreliable, slovenly, sports-crazed, sex-obsessed, crotch-scratching boors. They are all these things, but they are not merely these things. As we’ve seen in this chapter, guys are also capable of achievements that a nonguy cannot even imagine without the aid of strong prescription drugs. So if you’re a woman, and you find yourself getting irritated at the guy in your life because he has a few petty guy foibles such as a tendency to blow his nose on the curtains, remember that, if some kind of crisis were to arise, this very same so-called “worthless” guy is fully capable of sizing up the situation in a calm and coolheaded manner, and then—without regard for his own personal safety—going out for a beer. If I were you, I’d encourage him.
1 Especially in this book.
2 Or, as it is sometimes called in modern slang lingo, “Mary Joan.”
3 Who somehow had the presence of mind to use his alias.
4 Doctors confirmed that he did, in fact, have one.
5 In this case, experts recommend a five iron.
6 Unless you’re a member of Mountain Men Anonymous.
7 It tasted like chicken.
Conclusion
The Aging Guy:
Settling Down and Hurling Buicks
—PLUS—
Future Guys of Tomorrow:
Is There Hope for Humanity?
(No.)
WHAT HAPPENS when guys get older? Do they finally realize that there’s more to life than clicking the remote control and talking about sports? Do they get in touch with their inner feelings? Do they become mature and wise?
Don’t be an idiot. Real guys do not mature, except in the sense of developing longer nose hair. Emotionally, they remain guys. They still do guy stuff; the main difference is that, as they get older and earn more money and find themselves in positions of authority, they can do bigger guy stuff. They don’t have to settle for merely dropping the occasional commode off of the occasional rooftop to see what happens; they can have working Air Force bombers.
Speaking of which, a fine example of an aging guy retaining his essential guyness is George Bush. You may not have agreed with everything he said when he was president,1 but he was definitely a guy. He’d go up to his compound in Kenneth E. Bunkport IV, Maine, accompanied by the entire massive presidential entourage—aides, advisers, media experts, personal staff, dozens of press people, the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, squadrons of frogpersons, fleets of helicopters, and several submersibles—just so he could drive around real fast in his motorboat. You’d see him on the TV news, zooming across the water, the president of the United States, with an expression identical to that of a three-year-old boy pushing a little metal Tonka truck and making a motor sound with his lips, the way little boys instinctively do, like this: BRRRRMMMMM.
Looking at him, you knew for a fact that he was not thinking about the unemployment rate, or the status of his proposed federal budget, or problems in the Middle East. You knew exactly what he was thinking, because it was the same thing that every guy is thinking when he is driving a motorized vehicle really fast. George Bush, the Most Powerful Man in the Most Powerful Nation on Earth, the Leader of the Free World, was thinking: BRRRRMMMMM.
Of course not all older guys express their guyness by driving fast. Some of them hurl large objects long distances. I am thinking here of two guys in Texas, an artist/engineer named Richard Clifford and a dentist named John Quincy. One evening, while drinking beer,2 they got to talking—as guys do when they are opening up and sharing their innermost feelings—about medieval war weapons. Specifically, they got to talking about trebuchets, which are like catapults, but more powerful. Medieval armies used trebuchets to hurl heavy objects, such as boulders, at enemy cities. Sometimes the armies would even throw dead horses. As you can imagine, this was a real morale-breaker:
MEDIEVAL HUSBAND: Hi honey! I’m home from my medieval job in the field of crossbow sales! What’s for dinner?
MEDIEVAL WIFE: Your favorite! A nice big mutton …
WHAM
(A DEAD HORSE COMES CRASHING THROUGH THE CEILING, SPEWING RANCID, MAGGOT-RIDDEN FLESH EVERYWHERE.)
MEDIEVAL HUSBAND: Actually, I’m not hungry.
MEDIEVAL WIFE: I cannot wait for the Renaissance.
So Richard Clifford and John Quincy, being guys, naturally decided that they needed to build a trebuchet. And not just any trebuchet, either. Their goal is to build the biggest trebuchet in the history of the world. They want to build a trebuchet that can hurl a Buick two hundred yards—a feat that your medieval armies never even dreamed of.3
Clifford and Quincy are serious about this. They have traveled to England to consult with a leading trebuchet expert. They have built and experimented extensively with a small prototype trebuchet, which they use to hurl bowling balls. Quincy has even purchased an eighty-acre property next to his house, just so the Buick will have a place to land.
You might think that these are just a couple of isolated eccentrics, but you would be wrong. There are plenty of guys like them. When I wrote a newspaper column about their trebuchet project, I got mail from all over the country. None of this mail was from women. All of it was from adult guys, writing detailed, serious letters expressing strong interest in either (a) seeing the Buick get hurled, or (b) building trebuchets of their own. There was no hint, in these letters, that any of these guys thought this was an unusual thing to want to do; it seemed perfectly natural to them to want to build devices that can hurl heavy objects long distances for no conceivable useful purpose.
Why? Because this is what guys do. Guys, no matter how old they get, like to hurl stuff and shoot stuff and go fast and blow stuff up and knock stuff down. This is why, as I pointed out in the introduction to this book, we have a space program. No matter what NASA would have us believe, the purpose of the space program is not to benefit the human race by advancing the frontiers of human knowledge. We humans do not need to leave Earth to get to go to a hostile, deadly, alien environment; we already have Miami.
No, the purpose of the space program is to give guys at NASA an excuse to build a whole lot of cool technical stuff and giant rockets that go
BRRRKRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMM
and hurl large objects great distances. If the NASA guys thought that the taxpayers would let them get away with it, they’d try to hit the Moon with a Buick.
True guys continue to be guys, no matter how old or allegedly responsible they get. If you doubt this, go to any sporting event. I am writing these words the morning after attending a National Basketball Association play-off game in Miami between the Miami Heat and the Atlanta Toad Excrements (not that I am biased). The crowd around me was mostly guys in
their forties and older—husbands and fathers with responsible, demanding South Florida jobs such as stockbroker, doctor, lawyer, narcotics kingperson, etc. I am certain that these guys think of themselves as mature and rational individuals. I’m also certain that they believe they are, as males, more logical than females, and less likely to be governed by their feelings. They would tell you that, quite frankly, they are a little embarrassed by the way their wives tend to cry during the sad part of a romantic movie. Because after all, it’s just a movie; there’s no reason to get all emotional about it.
That’s what these guys would tell you, if you asked them. But you should not ask them during a play-off basketball game, because they are very busy reacting rationally and logically to events on the court.
“YOU SUCK, SEIKALY!” they are informing Miami Heat center Rony Seikaly. “YOU SUCK!” they add, by way of clarification. Seikaly has just missed two free throws with less than two minutes to go, and the middle-aged guys all hate him. They are on their feet, their bodies vibrating with fury, their faces dark red and contorted with rage, the muscle cords standing out in their necks. They have never, ever, hated anybody, including Hitler, as much as they hate Rony Seikaly at this particular moment. Hitler was a bad person, yes, but he did not miss important free throws in the play-offs.
These men want to kill Rony Seikaly. They want to see him dismembered and have his eyeballs eaten by rats right there on the basketball court. They want him to …