Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys Page 8
So anyway, despite not having Malone, the 76ers managed to hang in the game, and with less than thirty seconds left they had pulled within two points. That was the good news. The bad news was that Larry Bird, the Celtic legend, was going to shoot two foul shots.
People wonder, sometimes, how come white people don’t play basketball as well as black people. The answer, I believe, is that for some reason Nature decided to concentrate all of the natural basketball ability for the entire white race for the past fifty years into Larry Bird.
So most people in the crowd figured Bird was going to make these shots and put the game out of reach. The three smirking Beantown fans behind me just knew it. And you could tell that Larry Bird knew it, too, as he stepped up to the foul line, bounced the ball, and cocked his arm to shoot.
I read an article once stating that down in Central America, they take sports a little too seriously in the sense that they routinely kill each other over soccer. (For the record, I think this is overreacting, unless of course once again we are talking about the play-offs.)
So anyway, there was this big match once where El Salvador beat Honduras, or the other way around, and the next day one of the newspapers in the winning country claimed that the foot of Jesus had actually come down from heaven several times and deflected shots from the winning team’s goal. There was an actual drawing of this in the newspaper.
Now, you may laugh at this, but I do not. Because a very similar thing happened in the 76ers–Celtics game, except that it was not the foot of Jesus (although He might have helped). It was Concern Rays emanating from Buzz and me at a level of intensity that we had never before achieved. These rays shot laserlike from our foreheads, intercepted the ball at the height of its arc, and caused Larry Bird to miss twice.
I am not seeking praise here. I am merely stating a fact.
And now the 76ers had the ball. They tried to run a play but they screwed up, and wound up with Charles Barkley, who is six feet, six inches tall and slightly greater in width, in a jump-ball situation against the Celtics’ Kevin McHale, who is six-ten. And there were three seconds left. And the crowd was on its feet, making more noise than all Space Shuttle launches combined.
And here is what happened: Barkley wins the tap. And the ball goes to Julius Erving, the old over-the-hill Doctor J, who is guarded by Danny Ainge, the whiny little weenie cheap-shot-specialist guard, and—there is one second on the clock now—Erving launches a three-point shot.
Buzz and I know we can help this shot. But—this is the kind of self-sacrificing fans we are—we want Doctor J to have the glory. So we leave his shot alone, and it arcs upward over Ainge’s hand, and over all the Celtics’ heads, even Larry Bird’s, and then it arcs downward downward downward and
SWISH
it goes clean through. The buzzer sounds. The game is over. The Sixers win. The public-address system, cranked up loud enough to be heard clearly in Guam, starts playing the Isley Brothers’ version of Shout. And Buzz and I, moving smoothly, like well-trained dancers who have had several beers apiece, leap to our feet, whirl to face the Boston fans behind us, and cup our hands to our ears, indicating by this gesture our concern over the fact that, for the first time all game, we don’t hear them saying anything
And of course they have nothing to say.
My point is, a guy can get involved with a team. This can enable the guy to experience wonderful, magical moments, like the one I just described. But it also makes the guy vulnerable—yes, vulnerable—to a kind of emotional distress that, frankly, many women cannot imagine.
Tune in to any radio sports-talk show and you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about. You’ll hear human misery of a magnitude rarely found outside of intensive-care units. You’ll hear guys who rarely show their emotions, guys who don’t cry at funerals, guys who are reluctant to openly hug their own children—you’ll hear these guys coming close to tears over sports events that may have occurred years ago. (If you want to see raw pain, just walk up to any guy Red Sox fan and say: “How about that Bill Buckner error in the 1986 World Series?” Go ahead! Ask him! It’s fun!)
As I write these words, in the summer of 1993, in Miami, Florida, I’m listening to a sports-talk radio show on which the callers—all of them guys—are extremely upset about the Dave Magadan trade. It’s all they want to talk about.
For those of you who do not follow world events, I should explain that Dave Magadan was a player for the Florida Marlins, who traded him to Seattle. A lot of guys down here believe that this trade was a mistake, that the Marlins should have traded a player named Orestes Destrade instead. And so these guys call the talk shows, night and day, to vent their feelings. The thing is, the Magadan trade took place three weeks ago. I seriously doubt that even Magadan is still talking about it.
But that doesn’t matter to these guys. Nor does it matter that they don’t personally know either Magadan or Destrade, or that this trade will have no observable impact on their lives. What matters is that they care, which is why they cannot stop themselves from picking away endlessly at this particular emotional scab:
SPORTS-TALK-SHOW HOST: You’re on the air.
CALLER: I am really upset about this Magadan trade. I think it sucks. I can’t believe they …
HOST: Hold it! I’ve just been handed a news bulletin! It says that the Turkey Point nuclear generating plant has blown up, and South Florida is being covered by a giant radioactive cloud!
CALLER: I mean, we’re talking about a guy who was a lifetime three-hundred hitter.
Of course I’m making up the preceding dialogue. It’s unrealistic in the sense that (a) the Turkey Point nuclear plant did not blow up, and (b) even if it did, the host would never interrupt the show with such a frivolous topic so soon after a major roster move.
Because he is also a guy.
In this chapter, I have presented a few of the unique problems that guys must face each day. Rest assured that guys have plenty of other problems, and they can be just as devastating and traumatic. Ear hair springs to mind. But I’m not going to dwell on these problems, because part of the Guy Code is to be tough, to not complain, to bear up silently under hardships that would bring a lesser gender to its knees.
Also my fingers are tired.
1 Today: People Who Have Sex with Trees.
2 Today: People Who Eat Their Children, Then Have Sex with Trees.
3 And you, as a result, are minus one toe.
4 About three quarters of an inch, for most guys.
5 Unless, of course, the team is the Boston Red Sox.
6
Special Medical
Concerns of the Guy
or: “It’s Just a Sprain”
THE GUY BODY is unlike the female body. And I am not talking here about the obvious peaks and valleys. I am talking about a unique guy physical problem, a severe genetic handicap that poses a grave risk to the health of the guy body; namely, it is under the control of the guy mind.
The guy mind does not believe in medical care. Guys will generally not seek medical treatment, for themselves or for others, except in certain clear-cut situations, such as decapitation. And even then, guys are not going to be 100 percent certain. “Let’s put his head back on with duct tape and see if he can play a couple more innings,” is the prevailing guy attitude.
There is a reason for this. If you are a guy, you have learned, the hard way, that when you get involved in a medical situation, even as a bystander, there is always a chance that a medical professional will suddenly, without warning, put on a rubber glove and stick his hand up your butt, looking for your prostate. Most guys have no idea what a “prostate” is, but they’re pretty sure that if they had one up their butt, they’d already know about it.
So guys are suspicious of medical care. I will illustrate this attitude with a true anecdote involving a guy I know named Ted Shields. I met Ted through an outfit that he cofounded, along with a co-guy named Pat Monahan:
The World Famous Lawn Rangers Precis
ion Lawnmower Drill Team of Arcola, Illinois.
Arcola (slogan: “Amazing Arcola”) is a small town in central Illinois (slogan: “You Bet It’s Flat”). At one time Arcola was a major producer of broom corn, which is a type of corn used to make brooms.1 The town is still an important player in the broom-manufacturing industry and boasts one of the world’s largest collections of antique brooms and brushes. It also has one of the world’s largest rocking chairs, as well as an establishment called the French Embassy, which is the world’s only combination gourmet French restaurant and bowling alley. I am not making this up.
Every year in September, Arcola holds a Broom Corn Festival featuring a parade, and one of the most popular units in this parade is the world-famous Lawn Rangers, who march down the street pushing customized lawnmowers,2 carrying brooms, and performing precision broom-and-lawnmower marching maneuvers. The members are mostly pillars of the community who believe that it is possible to have a good time and yet do absolutely nothing useful for society.
I was deeply honored when I was invited to join the Rangers a few years back. It is not easy to belong to this exclusive unit: Membership is strictly limited to anybody who shows up on parade day at Ted Shields’s garage. This is where Ranger Orientation is held. Ranger Orientation consists of:
(1) Mental Preparation, by which I mean drinking beer;3
(2) the Business Meeting, which consists of activities too juvenile to mention even in this book, except to say that it involves, among other things, a man climbing up a ladder and, using props, presenting a dramatic rendition of a song, while the Rangers attempt to guess the title, which is not difficult because the song always involves the word “moon”;4 and
(3) Rookie Camp, which is where first-time Rangers, under the gentle yet firm guidance of seasoned veterans (“Listen up, you gravy-sucking pigs!”) learn the Rangers’ precision marching maneuvers,5 which consist of
“Walk the Dog,” which is when you hold your broom in the air with one hand and turn your lawnmower in a 360-degree circle with the other, and
“Cross and Toss,” which is when the two marching columns of Rangers switch sides; then toss their brooms in the air to each other; then try to catch the brooms; then, a lot of the time, miss.
Often the rookies must spend as long as two minutes in the grueling central-Illinois sun before they can perform these routines at the level of precision for which the Rangers are known.
Once Rookie Camp is complete, the Rangers form approximately two columns and march in the parade. If you have never been there, it is difficult for me to explain to you the feeling of electricity in the air as the Rangers, wearing their traditional uniforms of cowboy-style hats and Halloween-style masks to preserve their secret identities, wheel their mowers down the main parade route; and the Column Leaders—who carry long-handled toilet plungers to denote their rank—give the “Brooms Up!” command in preparation for a precision maneuver; and fifty Rangers, like a well-engineered machine, simultaneously do approximately forty-five different things. All I can say is, if you are watching us, you had better have a strong bladder.
I realize that I have gotten away from the actual chapter topic, which is guy medical concerns, but I felt I needed to get a plug into this book for the Lawn Rangers, an outfit that truly epitomizes the concept of Guyness. My feeling is that if more guys would join mellow, purposeless, and semi-dysfunctional organizations such as the Lawn Rangers, then there would be a lot fewer guys getting involved in aggressive, venal, destructive, and frequently criminal organizations such as the U.S. Congress.
But my immediate anecdote concerns Ranger co-founder Ted Shields, who was with some other Rangers on a fishing trip off the coast of Louisiana when he came down wrong on his ankle and broke it. Naturally he told everybody it was just a sprain. Guys always say it’s “just a sprain,” because this way they can avoid falling into the clutches of medical care. A guy could have one major limb lying on the ground a full ten feet from the rest of his body, and he’d claim it was “just a sprain.”
So although Ted’s ankle was painful and swelling rapidly and turning some nonstandard colors, Ted chose to remain on the boat and treat the injury himself.
“Fortunately,” he recalls, “we had beer.”
Following standard Red Cross procedure, Ted removed a number of cans from the cooler to make room in the ice for his foot.
“This meant we had to drink the beers immediately, lest they become warm,” he recalls. “But you do what you have to do.”
The Rangers fished for the remainder of the day—Ted fished with his foot in the cooler—then returned to land, where, that evening, knowing that they had an injured man and not wanting to take any chances, they all went dancing.
“My foot was hurting pretty bad,” Ted recalls, “but I was one of the few Rangers who did not fall down that night.”
The next day they returned to Arcola, where Ted’s wife, Joyce, a keen observer, observed that (a) he could barely walk, and (b) one of his legs had become much larger than the other; in fact, larger than some entire persons.
“It was a Pillsbury Doughboy leg,” is how Joyce describes it.
“It’s just a sprain,” is what Ted told her.
Nevertheless Joyce insisted on taking him to the hospital, where she had to fill out all the medical forms, because Ted was busy explaining to the hospital personnel that he didn’t really need treatment.
“His ankle was grotesque,” Joyce recalls. “People were staring at it, and I was trying to get these papers filled out, and Ted was leaning over my shoulder and saying ‘It’s just a sprain.’”
A number of weeks later, Ted got out of his cast, in time to march in the Broom Corn Parade. So all’s well that ends well. But my point is that, if there is a guy in your life, and you want him to get decent medical care, you cannot rely on him or Hillary Clinton to be responsible for it. You have to use a technique that was perfected by wildlife officials for use with bears and rhinoceroses, namely: tranquilizer darts. This is the only way you can be sure of getting a guy to a medical-care facility in a timely manner if he has, for example, injured himself during a touch-football game, and you have pointed out that there are bones sticking from his body, plus some aortal bleeding, but he is claiming that this condition will probably go away on its own. In this case you should fire a dart or two into his body, let him stagger around for a few more plays until he collapses, then strap him to the trunk of the car and take him to the hospital. And when you get him there, be sure to tell the doctors that, in addition to his obvious injuries … he has been complaining about his prostate.
He deserves it.
Guy Medical Conditions
Thus far we have been discussing the basic guy attitude toward medical care, which may be summarized as follows: stupid. But we also need to discuss specific medical conditions that guys are prone to, such as:
Guy Vision
This is a condition that guys have that makes them unable to see certain types of details. Notice I say “certain types.” There are some details that guys can see extremely well. For example, a guy at a baseball game can see with perfect clarity that the umpire has made a totally wrong and possibly criminal call on a close play at home plate. A guy can see this type of detail even though he has had four beers and is several hundred feet from the actual play; some guys can see this type of detail perfectly even if they were in the men’s room when the play occurred.
Also guys can see naked female breasts at unbelievable distances. If there is a breast around, a guy will see it. And once he sees it, he is pretty much unable to stop looking at it, no matter what else is going on (see the section in chapter 2 on Lust-Induced Brain Freeze). Not long ago, I was at Miami Beach, having brunch with a coeducational group, and after we ate we decided to walk on the beach. It was a beautiful sunny day, and we were talking, and suddenly the three guys spotted two naked breasts, which, as it happened, belonged to a woman who was lying on a towel. Now, a lot of women sunbathe in a t
opless manner on Miami Beach. They’re very casual about it, and I try to act casual about it, but in fact it never ceases to astound me that this is happening. When I was an adolescent, the only reliable source of breast visuals was National Geographic, a magazine then devoted, as far as I could tell, to doing feature articles on every primitive tribe in the world in which the women went around topless. When I was in junior high school, my friends and I were extremely interested in these articles, specifically the photographs that had captions like “A young woman of the Mbonga tribe prepares supper using primitive implements.” We would spend long periods of time staring at the young woman’s implements, and we’d wonder how come we’d had the incredibly bad luck of being born in the one society in the entire world (judging from National Geographic) wherein women wore a lot of clothes. If there had been a beach near us where women sunbathed topless, we would have lived there, surviving by eating jellyfish.
So anyway, when we three guys noticed the sunbathing woman, we immediately flashed each other, via subtle covert glances, the Urgent Code Red Priority One Naked Breast Alert signal. We tried to look as unconcerned as possible—A topless woman! Big deal!—and we continued chatting with the women, appearing to be interested in the conversation, but in fact our bodies were dividing up our available brainpower as follows:
My point is that guys are capable of tremendous visual concentration. Unfortunately, they have no say in the decision as to what their eyeballs choose to concentrate on, which means that they often miss certain subtle details, such as what their wives look like. Take the case of a couple I know named (really) Steele and Bobette Reeder. One time Bobette was getting ready to substantially change her hairstyle, and, in a gesture of compassion, she decided to alert Steele.