by Dave Barry
Wait a minute! Rony has grabbed an offensive rebound! He’s putting the ball back up! It’s going to go … YES! SCORE! WAY TO GO, RONY! YES! HIGH FIVE! MY MAN RONY!! The middle-aged guys love Rony Seikaly. They want to kiss him on the lips. They want to fly to a medical clinic in Sweden and undergo major elective surgery so they can have Rony’s children. They cannot believe they are so fortunate as to be on the same planet as such a magnificent human being as Rony Seikaly. He is a giant. He is a god. He is …
He is not guarding his man! His man is blowing right past him for an easy layup! Shit! YOU SUCK, SEIKALY! YOU SUCK!! YOU …
You see my point. Guys, even as they get older, remain deeply concerned about the basic guy issues, as discussed extensively in this book and summarized in the following chart.
Issues That Are of Major Concern to Guys Issues That Are Not of Major Concern to Guys
The play-offs Global warming, unless it concerns the play-offs
Whether they are being tailgated Whether they are tailgating
Who won the 1962 World Series What happens to the laundry after you drop it on the floor
Eating Cooking
Sex The specific person they are having sex with
These are the core values that have been preserved by guys throughout the millennia. But what about the future? What will happen when the current generation of guys passes away, possibly as a result of trebuchet-related injuries? Is the next generation ready to step up and carry on the guy tradition, with all the responsibilities it entails? This is the question that prompted me to initiate a probing, heart-to-heart conversation with my son.
“Robert,” I said. “I need to talk to you about a matter of some importance to the future of humanity.”
“Not now,” he said. “Me and Trey are setting golf balls on fire.”
So the future of guyness looks bright. If you need further proof, consider the following anecdote told to me by a friend of mine, Kathi Goldmark. She had spent a couple of days at a Miami hotel, and one employee had been so helpful that Kathi, when she got home, decided to send a letter of praise to the employee’s boss. She finished the letter, but did not remove it from the typewriter until the next morning, when, in a hurry, she took it out, signed it, and began to fold it to put it into the envelope. This was when she happened to notice that, at the bottom of this nice, polite letter she was about to send to a hotel executive she had never met, her nine-year-old son, Tony, had neatly typed:
p.s. Don’t forget to fart.
This incident causes me to experience conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I feel a tremendous sense of sorrow and loss caused by the fact that Kathi did not actually send the letter. But at the same time I feel great happiness, knowing that young guys like Tony will be coming along to fill the void that will exist some day when we older guys finally move on to that Big Keg Party in the Sky.
Because let’s face it, the human race needs guys. I realize that sometimes we can be annoying to you nonguys, but just try to imagine what the world would be like without us. Okay, granted, it would smell better. Also there would be a dramatic reduction in violence, intolerance, and public nose-picking. But these negatives are far outweighed by the numerous contributions that guys make to society—positive contributions, vital contributions, contributions that are in no way diminished by the fact that I can’t, offhand, think of what they are.
No matter. Guys, and guyness, are here to stay. And although the tone of this book has been somewhat flippant, I want to close by saying, in all sincerity, that I hope the effort I have made in these pages will in some small way improve the level of understanding between guys and persons of other genders, so that some day this fragile and troubled world in which we all must exist together will truly be a better and more caring place in which to blah blah blah p.s. Don’t forget to fart.
1 This is partly because he never once publicly completed a sentence.
2 As if I need to tell you this.
3 The most your medieval armies dreamed of hurling was a Fiat.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1995 by Dave Barry
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-191289
eISBN: 978-0-307-75874-3
This edition is published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.
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