Loading ...Hey, it’s the return of the TCM man stuff roundtable! This week, the topic is this: “What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten on how to be a man?” Enjoy.
Dale
I am not a man (despite my first name). But there are ways that women can be manly that can be advantageous. My best friend in high school was a guy, and I usually went to him with my boy troubles.
At one point, I was amidst a scandal of epic (for high school, anyhow) proportions. I made out with a friend’s boyfriend. Yeah, it was an asshole move, and I felt horrible. I also felt horrible about the fact that he told everyone I basically kiss-raped him (you wish you were all that, buddy). While I was labeled a home-wrecker (not true- they are married now), he got off scot-free.
I bemoaned the inequity of it all to my best guy friend. He said, “Dale, nothing was ever helped by spazzing.” Wow. He was right. So I took the high road. I didn’t talk about it. I ignored the whispers. High school isn’t forever. But the advice has stayed with me, and I pride myself on my non-spaz nature. Long before Steve Harvey suggested thinking like a man, Nathan pointed me in the right direction.
Nathan (a different Nathan)
As a child or a young man for that matter, I can’t ever remember receiving any kind of worth while advice from anyone. Truth of it is, I most likely wasn’t listening. There is one very valuable lesson I learned from one of my crazy uncles. My uncle Jimmy, or Bud, as I liked to call him, was in his mid-to-late thirties at the time and lived with my grandmother in Covington. Uncle Bud had a problem with beer and its overwhelming powers of persuasion to make him do some of the most moronic and asinine things in the history of funny drunken uncles. Hence the name.
This one example for instance has stayed with me for the past twenty-two years and is one of the few and definitely the manliest lesson I have ever learned so far. In the late 70’s and early 80’s a wondrous invention known as the space heater was used in many homes to help with the heat during the Fall and Winter months. Heard of it? Back then, these heaters where not as advanced or safe as they are in the 21st century and more often than not the electric elements that emitted the heat where exposed in the unit. My grandmother kept her space heater in the bathroom. It was an old house, and had a great big cast iron tub with no shower. Naturally it was cold when you got out of the bath so she put a space heater in there. Uncle Bud returning home late one night after an evening of overindulgence, had to relieve himself. Long story short, Uncle Bud missed the toilet and pissed on the space heater. My poor grandmother found my uncle with his pants around his ankles passed out on the floor after a few thousand volts went streaming through his penis. To this day if I see a space heater in a bathroom I cringe, and try to aim in the other direction.
Wes
My father is decidedly unmanly, and so much of my advice came from the Dad of my two best friends, a set of twins named Jeff and Mike. He took us on the standardly guy-centric excursions like camping and to the BMX track in Boone County, and as a construction worker each summer he would bring a set of 10-foot tall scaffoldings to set up in their back yard for us to play on like a jungle gym. He let us ride in the back of his pickup while he drove all over town, and we’d spend at least part of the time throwing pennies out of the back at cars behind us on the expressway.
Yeah, we were little assholes, and he let us do some stupid shit.
But when it came down to it, he gave good advice. He told us once, and I remember it well enough still to quote him, that “Being a man means never starting a fight; but if the other guy starts one, being a man also means you always finish it.”
Hipp
I think the best advice I’ve gotten with reference to manliness came in a simple yet very meaningful sentence. The context in which I received this advice was on the rugby pitch, after quite possibly breaking my hand. At the bottom of a ruck (to non-rugby players, read: pile of large men), my arm got stuck as I saw one of the opposing forwards taking the next phase right back at the original ruck. Unable to move it, I could do nothing but watch the 300 lb guy’s cleat come down square on my hand as he ran past the pile.
When the stack of players on top of me finally cleared out and I could get up, my hand had already about doubled in size. I started to stumble towards the sideline, figuring I was done for the day, but we didn’t have anyone who could sub in for me, and the match was almost over. At the next break, I expressed my concern to our team captain, who came back with the best advice I could think to give a man: “STOP BEING A BITCH!”
Though he was referring to the pain in my hand and the need for me to sack up for just a few minutes more, I think that actually is applicable to a lot of life in general. Pretty much any time a man has a problem, he should stop to ask himself whether it’s really as bad as he thinks, or if he’s just being a bitch.
Matthew McLean
This is tough for me, because most manly advice I have ever received was bad, stupid, and/or rude and “manly” definitely deserves to be put in quotes. I am talking about “pick on the little guy” or “kick a guy when he is down” sort of mentality. While I was growing up it seemed like nice, funny, interesting, intellectual guys couldn’t be manly. You had to be a neanderthal jerk in order to get any respect and score with the ladies. So, I guess this advice ended up making me the man I am today: I hated it, so I tried my best to always do the opposite.
Jason McGlone
While “Stop being a bitch” definitely goes a long way in my internal lexicon of manliness, there are two specific phrases that I’ve found to be at least equally important. The first of those is “Righty tighty, lefty loosey. Most of the time, anyhow.” Simple enough, yes? Maybe so–but it’s enough to make sure you can fix about half the broken shit in your house.
The second bit is simple, too. Pay attention. It’s invaluable advice that can keep you alive, ensure that you’re thoughtful, or make you look like the greatest man on the planet. So pay attention, jerk.
Mike Hickerson
The best advice I received was from Robert Hayden’s poem, “Those Winter Sundays.” (You can read it here.) Hayden describes how his father got up before anyone and start the fire on freezing cold mornings, and he contrasts the fire’s warmth with his father’s “chronic angers.” It ends,
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
What’s the advice? If you’re the man of the house, you show your love by doing the hard, thankless jobs that no one else wants.
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I thought you all should know that Mike demonstrated his manly advice this week by 1) ridding our house of the mouse caught in his trap, and 2) cleaning the nasties out of the bottom of our dishwasher.
THAT is a man!
Elizabeth
(Mike’s wife)