PSST.... Ladies, I Have a Secret to Tell You

I have been wondering if should tell this or not.  But I think the time has come to share a secret.  Women, I'm gonna give you a secret that will change your life.  This secret is really about how to keep your man happy (whether he is your spouse, fiancé, or boyfriend). This secret can make life easier (for those who use it wisely) or a valuable weapon (if used maliciously).  It is because of this double scoop of yin/yang-edness that might cause me to lose my MAN card.  But how does the saying go?: If you lose something and it comes back to you, it never was.  But if you let it go and it comes back with a 10% off coupon then you can return it without any questions.... or something like that.  Anyway, the secret I want to tell the women of the world is:


If Judge Judy can write a book called K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) then surely I can write a book called M.A.S.S. (Men Are Simple... Seriously (changed just enough to keep from getting sued)).  That is my secret. Men are simple.  We are as simple as the previous sentence.


We are unbelievably simple!  Basically, if you spend a minute and a half trying to get the full understanding of something we said or did, then you spent 85 more seconds than we did on the same issue.  Don't over-think!  Take the simplest reason and it is probably what we were thinking.  I think not accepting the simpleness is what generates the complexness of most situations.


Here's why I believe we are so simple. We grow up but we don't ever really mature.  It's like that theory that says if you domesticate a cat it never truly reaches adulthood.  We are the same way (domestication optional).  Case and point: What we like to do when we are 15 we like to do when we are 50 or 150. (I know at 150 we would be dead but our ghosts still have the 15-year mentality.)  Our tastes only change a little as we get older.  Everything we like to eat, smell, do, play... It's all decided by age 15.  Anything else is a mild variation of the same thing.


I still love to watch the same TV shows and movies.  You get me Smurfs, Tom and Jerry or old Transformers (tv show or movie (still cry when Optimus Prime dies in the movie)) and I'm happy.  Don't forget Star Wars (IV, V, VI).  I could go on forever with this but my point is I loved those things when I was younger and I still love those things now. 


We still play the same games.  I have a bag in my car RIGHT NOW that has the original Nintendo, the old school Super Nintendo and the advanced-for-its-time Nintendo 64 in it (with games).  I'm not telling you why it's there but the point still remains.... I played some of those games when I was 9 and I still have fun playing them.  Sadly, they are taking up the spot that used to be for my golf clubs.  Speaking of golf....


Golf and sports in general REALLY make us at like children.  If I could, I would play golf everyday (twice a day).  Football is worse!  I starting liking the Cowboys when I was 4.  30+ years later, I'm still exactly the same way (beer, bad language and all).  (Quick Side Note: My wife HATES the Cowboys so there is no need for anyone to jump down my throat for that.  My wife will take care of that when football season starts.)  Another thing about men and sports... Even though we are older we still believe we can play those sports like we are in our teens.  That RARELY ends well and is often sad.  However, the times we DO accomplish the feat of playing like we are still in our youth.... It's becomes this magical thing that has a life all it's own.  We will never forget it and neither will our significant others.  (My wife probably still rolls her eyes when I start the story of my flag football team taking out the young 20 somethings to win the championship a couple of years back.  That day will go down in the opposite of infamy. As a matter of fact, my wife is probably somewhere right now rolling her eyes as I'm writing this.  And YES I DO believe we can still win it again (more eye rolls)!)  Then there's food.


When it comes to foods, we don't like to try new things.  That's not to say we won't.  That's just to say that no matter what restaurant I go to I look for the chicken fingers on the menu.  And if I KNOW the fingers are good, I will order that every single time I go to the restaurant.  Sometimes I try to fool myself into thinking I'm going to get something different but it never works.  I do get crazy with the chicken fingers every now and then.  Sometimes is get BBQ sauce; Sometimes I get Sweet N Sour; Sometimes I get Honey Mustard. (You get my point.)


Now, I will say this... There ARE exceptions to the SIMPLE rule.  A (nother) quick note on the men that fall into the exceptions category.... Save yourself! Throw them back!  They are of no use to you or anyone else.  They will make your life so complicated...  Consider yourself warned.  And if we are friends with those guys, we don't like hanging around them either.  They complicate our lives as well.  We are just able to handle them a little better.  Probably because our intelligence DOES drop a few points when we hang out with our friends.  It's one of those scientific mysteries (like black holes and duck-billed platypuses (a creature so weird there's no accepted PLURAL form of the word)).  But we have LOOOONG come to grips with the I.Q. "droppage" and, frankly, we kinda like it!  (It makes it easier to follow through on the double and triple dog dares we receive during guys nights.)


So women, if you want to take over the world (or just keep you men happy) then you just need realize the simplicity that is man.  There have been books after books about that subject that are far more complicated than the acts themselves.  Some of those books are going to contradict everything I just wrote.  And the truth of the matter is that book was either written by someone who needed to fill a lot of pages to get it published or it was written by a woman.


And for all of the women who have realized what I'm saying is true but have decided to keep the man with the hope of changing him one day, just remember this... Is it easier to tell a 4-year old that they need to change and move up to YOUR level of maturity or is it easier for you to work your way down to theirs?  See... now you understand.  You should lower your expectations and (if we love you) we will find a way to meet you in the middle.


Women... This is the part where you should stop reading (or pretend to) while talk to the men for a moment.  As I said before, we are simple.  So this won't take long.


Men... I know it sounds like I've been knocking US.  But I'm not.  We benefit from this logic.  Now, you could stand there and argue that I'm wrong or you can go play golf.  You could completely take this time to disprove everything I just wrote.  While you are doing that, I will be World of Warcrafting my way to victory.  You could debate every one of my points to show the women in your life that we (YOU) have evolved...  But I promise you will be sacrificing the war to win the battle.  Because once you prove that you can do it, you will be proving it every day of your life from here on out.  Let me know how that works out for ya!  But you'll have to leave me a message because they don't like me to have my phone out on the football field.  GO RAGE! (That was an inside joke to my CHAMPIONSHIP winning flag football team.  I MUST tell you that story one day.  Right, honey?)

Changes to Man Night

What???  So, was anyone going to send me an email or something?!?!  I'm sorry.  When I heard "Man-Night" I was thinking something different. Now, that's not to say I didn't enjoy it or have fun.  That's just to say that I need to make some changes to my blueprint if that's the way things are going to be moving forward.

The first part was what I expected. I was late getting to the "get together" because I had to wait for the wife to get off of work so there would be someone here with the kids.  Personally, I think I could have left them home alone 30 minutes earlier.  What trouble could they have possibly gotten into in 30 min???

Anyway... I go to the Man-Night spectacular.  I get there right before the kickoff of the Cowboys/Saints game.  I would make a sports statement right now but I'm going to leave it alone... for the moment.  But this is the start to what I expected.  We had football.  We had beer.  We had wings.  We even had pizza (I love me some Papa Murphys!).  I wasn't expecting that but I completely embraced it as the way it should have been all along.  This easily carries us to halftime.

So what do we do for halftime.  Beer and Pool (or Billiards depending on where you came from).  That was fun too.  But since I suck at pool (as well as the person I was playing against) the ONE game lasted the entire halftime.  As I knock the 8-ball in (yes, I won) it was time for the kickoff of the second half.

We are going to fast-forward a little bit because the next hour and a half of football was exactly the same as the first hour and a half (Football, beer, wings, pizza, dip... yada, yada, yada).  The only thing I will mention is that my team won.  So I won at pool and my COWBOYS stopped the Saints undefeated run. Also, I am fully aware that I lost half of my readers just by mentioning I am a Cowboys fan.  But the game ended and I'm 2 for 2.  What next?  This is the coveted male Holy Grail.  Surely, we have something else to do.

I know... Let's play Mario Kart for the Wii!  Wait... Did I just say we should play Mario Kart for the Wii? The odd part of this is that it seemed like the right thing to say and more so it seemed like the right thing to do.  So we agreed.  Mario Kart it is.

And though this was fun, I can't help but feel like I just lost my MAN card.  Is this what MAN Night looks like now?  Have I forgotten what it's like to do manly things (I'm sure Spuds is going to jump all over this one)?  But between me and the friend that was hosting this there are a total of 2 men and 7 women!  The guy-to-girl ratio is WAY off.

Most of the time I try to write something funny but this time I have a genuine concern. I'm not really sure what I was expecting out of Man Night.  I was, however, expecting something to happen that I would have to explain to my wife.  And I don't mean that in a Tiger Woods kind of way.  But I was thinking that I would at least have a YouTube video with me dressed in a chicken suit running down the highway doing the Macarena with bells on.  I guess I will have to save that until the next Man Night.

In the meantime... if any MEN have any ideas as to what I can plan for the next Man Night, just let me know.  Women, no offense... but I already get enough of YOUR ideas.  But thanks anyway. :)