I'll Mature When I'm Dead Read Online Free Page A
Author: Dave Barry
a lot on their plate, what with protecting their loved ones, preventing the extinction of humanity, etc. When a man purchases a necessary appliance such as a TV with a flat screen the size of a squash court, he cannot afford to fritter away valuable minutes reading the owner’s manual, especially when the first seventeen pages consist of statements like: WARNING: Do not test the electrical socket by sticking your tongue into it.
A man does not need instructions written by and for idiots. A man already knows, based on extensive experience in the field of being male, that the way to handle an appliance is to plug all the plugs into the holes that look to be about the right size or color, then turn everything on and see what happens. This is the system I use, and it has proved to be 100 percent effective roughly 65 percent of the time.
Granted, sometimes I have to make some adjustments. Two years ago I got a high-definition TV, and after I set it up, my wife (a woman) complained that the picture did not look like high definition to her . So I made some adjustments in the form of explaining patiently to her that she was incorrect, because it was a high-definition TV, and therefore, by definition, the picture she was seeing on it was in high definition.
For months, every time my wife watched television, she told me that the picture didn’t look like high definition to her, and I had no choice but to roll my eyes in a masculine fashion to indicate that she was getting in over her technological head. Then, after we’d had the TV for about a year, she decided—you know how women get these crazy ideas—to look at the manual. She removed the plastic sealing and began reading, and on page 28, somewhere after the warning about not using the TV as a life raft, she found a section about “inputs,” and she changed something, and there was a dramatic improvement in the quality of the picture. I argued that this could be coincidence—that maybe at that exact moment, the TV networks had decided to change from high definition to even higher definition. But my wife was sure it was because of what she had read in the manual. She even tried to show me the manual, but of course I did not look directly at it, because of the danger that my penis would fall off.
Q. Is that also why men refuse to ask directions?
A. If Man A asks Man B for directions, Man B, realizing that Man A is a weak, direction-asking type of male who probably also reads owner’s manuals, could decide to attack Man A’s village and plunder his women. Man A is not about to run that kind of risk. But there is more to it than that. Men are explorers. They do not follow the herd. If “everyone” says that the best way to get to a certain mall is to take a certain road because that is the road that the mall is located on, a man wonders if there might be another, better, as-yet-undiscovered route to that same mall. If Columbus, back in 1492, had taken directions from the so-called “experts” about how to get to India, he would never have set out in the opposite direction across the Atlantic Ocean, and today there would be no such thing as Microsoft, Dairy Queen, or syphilis.
Q. So are you basically saying that all of the things that women perceive as flaws in men are actually virtues, without which the human race would today be facing widespread misery, destruction, death, and possibly even extinction?
A. Also, no Dairy Queen.
Q. I never realized any of this. Now I feel so guilty for all the time that we women have spent thoughtlessly carping about men. I feel terrible about our insensitivity, and all the pain we must have caused you. I feel . . . Excuse me, are you listening?
A. What?
The Heart of Dadness
A Letter to a First-Time-Father-to-Be
S o you’re about to become a dad! That is wonderful news. As the poet Wordsworth once said, “Fatherhood is truly the most . . . HEY! You kids put down those hatchets RIGHT NOW!”
The poet
A man does not need instructions written by and for idiots. A man already knows, based on extensive experience in the field of being male, that the way to handle an appliance is to plug all the plugs into the holes that look to be about the right size or color, then turn everything on and see what happens. This is the system I use, and it has proved to be 100 percent effective roughly 65 percent of the time.
Granted, sometimes I have to make some adjustments. Two years ago I got a high-definition TV, and after I set it up, my wife (a woman) complained that the picture did not look like high definition to her . So I made some adjustments in the form of explaining patiently to her that she was incorrect, because it was a high-definition TV, and therefore, by definition, the picture she was seeing on it was in high definition.
For months, every time my wife watched television, she told me that the picture didn’t look like high definition to her, and I had no choice but to roll my eyes in a masculine fashion to indicate that she was getting in over her technological head. Then, after we’d had the TV for about a year, she decided—you know how women get these crazy ideas—to look at the manual. She removed the plastic sealing and began reading, and on page 28, somewhere after the warning about not using the TV as a life raft, she found a section about “inputs,” and she changed something, and there was a dramatic improvement in the quality of the picture. I argued that this could be coincidence—that maybe at that exact moment, the TV networks had decided to change from high definition to even higher definition. But my wife was sure it was because of what she had read in the manual. She even tried to show me the manual, but of course I did not look directly at it, because of the danger that my penis would fall off.
Q. Is that also why men refuse to ask directions?
A. If Man A asks Man B for directions, Man B, realizing that Man A is a weak, direction-asking type of male who probably also reads owner’s manuals, could decide to attack Man A’s village and plunder his women. Man A is not about to run that kind of risk. But there is more to it than that. Men are explorers. They do not follow the herd. If “everyone” says that the best way to get to a certain mall is to take a certain road because that is the road that the mall is located on, a man wonders if there might be another, better, as-yet-undiscovered route to that same mall. If Columbus, back in 1492, had taken directions from the so-called “experts” about how to get to India, he would never have set out in the opposite direction across the Atlantic Ocean, and today there would be no such thing as Microsoft, Dairy Queen, or syphilis.
Q. So are you basically saying that all of the things that women perceive as flaws in men are actually virtues, without which the human race would today be facing widespread misery, destruction, death, and possibly even extinction?
A. Also, no Dairy Queen.
Q. I never realized any of this. Now I feel so guilty for all the time that we women have spent thoughtlessly carping about men. I feel terrible about our insensitivity, and all the pain we must have caused you. I feel . . . Excuse me, are you listening?
A. What?
The Heart of Dadness
A Letter to a First-Time-Father-to-Be
S o you’re about to become a dad! That is wonderful news. As the poet Wordsworth once said, “Fatherhood is truly the most . . . HEY! You kids put down those hatchets RIGHT NOW!”
The poet
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