As a man, I am in a unique position to tell you some of the secret rules of men.
One of the first rules to know about men is this: “Bigger is better.” For instance, a man wants a big truck. If some other man has a bigger truck than him, the man will make up for it by going to the Maverik and buying the biggest possible Pepsicoke he can find (somewhere in the vicinity of a keg, complete with a bendy straw), and he’ll load up on the mega nachos, and don’t forget the Everest-size pack of beef jerky. This will make him feel better about seeing someone in a bigger rig, but you do have to understand, if he could upsize to a monster truck and legally drive it on the highway, he would.
Likewise, when a man becomes a cook, he wants an oven big enough to roast an emu or a moose. Not while they’re alive, of course; they will have been properly marinated.
This rule is how the idea of an addition to a house was born. The man looked at his house, decided there could be more, and he added an extension to it. Adding an extension to an extension is not out of the question, or out of the realm of possibilities. This is of course how the Pentagon was built. It started out as a ranch-style rectangle, then the first addition came off at 72 degrees. Another was added and another, until they were obliged to complete the pentagon shape to comply with the second rule of men.
The second rule of men is: “If you can make it look cool, do.” This is how chrome was invented. Man could look at rust and think it’s cool, but he also wanted to be flashy around the ladies, so he put chrome over the rust. It didn’t matter what the object was. If it could be catalyzed or dipped or coated, he was ready to make it reflect the sun. Everything from a car bumper to a spade, and many objects in between, have been chromed, if only to make them look more amazing than they really are.
That whole leaning tower of Pisa? You guessed it. It wasn’t built that way on accident. A man dared to ask, “Okay, so how can we make this stand out?”
The bike has followed all the rules of men by men over the ages. Bikes have been made bigger, shinier, and better looking in many ways. Even the riding of the bike has followed the rules: bigger air, flashier tricks, faster velodrome times, faster downhill. Now, this is not to say women haven’t contributed to the variety of biking sports. Marianne Vos, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot, and Haley Batten are top-tier at what they do. The point is that men have an innate desire to make things bigger somehow, or make them stand out in some way. This includes the physical object and how it’s used.
It was a man, after all, who, following a woman’s successful ride, decided it would look cool to go over the falls of Niagara in a chromed barrel. Charles G. Stephens made the fatal mistake of tying an anvil to his feet, thinking it would keep him inside the barrel. Upon impact, the anvil shot through the bottom of the barrel, and those watching only ever found one of his arms with the hollowed out remains of his barrel.
The third rule, and not the last, is one word: “Embellishment.” According to men, any story worth telling is worth embellishing. Otherwise known as BS or exaggeration, the man can’t tell a story without the main character being eaten by a wild animal, even if the main character is himself. And all this didn’t take place in the jungle, where wild animals are usually found, but it might have happened on the moon, or in a cave leading to the center of Earth, or in your backyard if that makes the tale all the more outlandish.
Remember the third rule whenever you hear the word “actually” come out of a man’s mouth. It’s probable that whatever facts he promises may be less reality than they are pure fantasy.
He has a full deck of jokers. He has a college degree from Wisenheimer University. He has a monster truck that can fly because he inflated the tires with helium. He learned how to spell from listening to old blues records. He is 150% M-H-I-N.
As a man, I might be subject to these rules, especially when I talk about architecture (wink, wink, hint, hint).
Xenosthesia.com 