Being a member in good standing of The Guys Club is arduous, taxing, and outright dangerous. Frankly, the only necessary prerequisite for life membership is having and maintaining a certain minimal level of testosterone. As you get older, this level of testosterone drops, which is likely the only reason any male at all makes it to old age.
The other necessary prerequisite to remaining in good standing is staying alive. Lets dont forget that. Its quite important if one is going to make it to the meetings. Training for all this begins early in life for males, and for kids like us who grew up on the farm, usually the first chemical other than testosterone that one came into contact with was fire.
As one thinks about all this, it must be the testosterone; little girls dont wake up in the morning wondering what they can set fire to today; what interesting thing can be done with Wooden Kitchen Matches; and where, exactly, can they be done at.
Hence it was no surprise when, at a recent family get-together, my brother and cousin brought up getting caught throwing lit wood matches off the chicken house as little boys. Even now, even all grown up and responsible, its easy to understand the attraction that little missiles of smoke and fire falling to the ground would bring. At the age of 6 or 7 or so, simple logic would lead a young boy to believe that matches were made that long for a reason: obviously so they would burn all the way to the ground.
So it is that most adult males reach old age able to look back at a wide range of interaction with fire, explosives, guns, and various other instruments of destruction. There was just a news blurp on the radio about a guy who decided to clean his fireplace chimney with a 16-gauge shotgun. Its important to notice that this information was presented on the radio by another male, and its even more important that the gauge of the shotgun was mentioned. All this is part of being in The Guys Club. The shotgun was not a 12-gauge. Not a 20-gauge. A 16-gauge.
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The fact that this guy has the style and panache to use no ordinary shotgun is important to us guys, and suggests his nomination for at least an honorable mention at the next meeting. For those of you who dont know, 16-gauge shotguns are very rare, kind of like a shotgun Edsel, and the ammunition is very hard to get and expensive. Therefore, using a 16-gauge at all, much less going chimney hunting with it, is really inspirational.
Just think. One minute this guy is having coffee with his Old Girl at the kitchen table, talking about this, that, and the other mundane events of concern. She goes off to work, he has a few moments before he has to leave, and about then, the caffeine hits the testosterone and bingo! He reaches down deep inside, brushes aside all other higher-level logical thinking processes, and thinks: Ill get the 16-gauge and kill the chimney. It needs cleaning. It is amazing to him that he hasnt thought about doing it this way before. It is amazing to him to picture the high regard that the boys at the next meeting will have for him when he tells them, in a most bored tone of voice, Um, yas, cleaned that chimney in three seconds. Oh? Eyes will turn his way. Mouthfuls of beer will be swallowed hurriedly. Didnt have to climb up on no roof to do it, neither.
Amazing, amazing, amazing. Not only that, maybe he can patent a new chimney cleaning franchise based on the explosive discharge of some new kind of never-thought-of-before barreled device, sell the idea as the next generation of brushless chimney cleaning, take the money and buy a new snowmobile, or a Harley, or a new truck.
Unfortunately (you knew there was an unfortunately coming, didnt you?) the chimney killed harder that he expected it too, and on the third shot to put it out of its misery, the old 16-gauge blew up, doing an unfortunate amount of damage to it, and an even more unfortunate amount of damage to its operator. (All this was in the newscast and is important because all us guys out here want to know not only did the guy survive but what happened to the heirloom 16-gauge? Poor guy, yeah, but the shotgun, now, thats a downright crying shame.)
Its unfortunate that this Happening made the national news services because Old Girls all over the country will now raise a big fuss every time some other Guy gets out the shotgun to clean the chimney.
They marry us because of the testosterone. The ought to at least let us work with it.
