Man In The Moon

It never ceases to amaze me that one of the worst punishments of childhood could become one the greatest joys of adulthood.  Think about it.  Remember when you were a kid and a nap was the worst punishment you could imagine?  Remember those dreaded words?

“That’s it!  You go straight to your room and get in that bed!  You are not to come out again until you’ve had a nap.”

I would have such a different reaction if those words were directed at me now.

“Really??  Do you mean it?  Wow, thanks.  By the way, what did I do to deserve this?  …cause I may want to repeat it again tomorrow…or maybe even later today.”

Obviously, grown-ups have totally different priorities than children.

Lesson Learned:

Sleep is a wondrous and far undervalued joy of life.

DISCLAIMER:  This post has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I didn’t get any sleep last night.  That’s just a coincidence.

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Let me set the stage first.  Picture my wife and daughter ganging up on me and begging me to watch a movie.  I’m trying to resist.  My daughter is doing the big puppy eyes.  My wife is giving me that look (Yeah, that one.) and motioning for me to sit REALLY close.  You know I didn’t stand a chance.  And for some reason, they kept repeating the fact that Dakota Fanning was in it as if that was the crucial piece of information that was going to sway me.

“Oh, you mean the screaming girl?” I asked.

“Yeah” they both answered, “isn’t she great?”  This is one of those head-scratching moments when I wonder if I’m in the same conversation as the people I’m talking to.

“Uhm…yeah…great…uhm…screamer.”

“So, can we watch it?” they went on relentlessly.  They knew I was caving when I agreed to look it up online.  It was called The Secret Life of Bees.  Here’s the official movie description:

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES
Set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the tale of Lily Owens a 14 year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother. To escape her lonely life and troubled relationship with her father, Lily flees with Rosaleen, her caregiver and only friend, to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by the intelligent and independent Boatwright sisters, Lily finds solace in their mesmerizing world of beekeeping.

I didn’t make that up.  It actually said “mesmerizing world of beekeeping.”  I still don’t know how women read something like that and then want to actually pay to see it.  Here’s how a guy reads that exact same description:

Tim Falletti, Check Em’ Out / Throw Em’ Out
Set in South Carolina in 1964, Dakota Fanning goes to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Anyway, I lost and had to watch it.  That’s 110 minutes of my life gone.  I would rather have sat through a couple of those old, elementary school filmstrips about real bees.  It came across like something off of the All Men Are Evil Monsters channel.  **cough** **cough** **Lifetime** **cough** **cough**  (Sorry, something in my throat there.)

I’ll let Tim Faletti tell you what it’s rated:

Tim Falletti, Check Em’ Out / Throw Em’ Out
What’s it rated? PG-13 for being incredibly preachy and boring.

The movie starts with her killing her mother.  The father she has to get away from is a horrible human being.  The women who are the heroes of the story are a bizarre collection of people led by Queen Latifah who plays the only semi-normal person there.  By the way, Dakota Fanning is now a teenager in this movie and gets her first movie kiss.

The only good thing that I can say about the entire movie is that Alicia Keys did a wonderful job playing comic relief.  She plays a walking stick surrounded by people who can actually act.  It’s truly hilarious.  I want it played for me 24 hours a day…if I ever slip into a coma.  If that doesn’t get me back up and out of the room, nothing ever will.

Lesson Learned:

Sometimes you just gotta take it and deal with it.

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Have you ever asked one of those questions that you ended up regretting, just wishing that you had never asked.  That’s what just happened to me.  I walked into the bathroom, and there were coffee filters on the counter by the toilet.

“Honey,” I said, “why are there coffee filters in the bathroom?”

And there it was…my question…I had asked it…out loud.  It was too late to take it back.

“Because we’re out of toilet paper,” she answered.

Now, I’m sure that you get this immediately, and you probably know exactly where this is going.  (Yep, that’s the place.)  But I didn’t get it, the concept being so entirely foreign to me that her answer seemed to make no sense.  So I reasked the question…and got the same answer.

Oh, if only I had dropped it there.  If only I had just shook my head, walked away, and attributed it all to some bizarre form of female nonsense.  Then I could still be blissfully free of the knowledge I must now carry to my grave.  But alas, no, dear reader, not I.  I jumped straight to a flippant response meant to show just how ridiculous I thought her answer to be.

“We’re out of milk too,” I said, “but I bet there aren’t any coffee filters in the fridge.”  That’s right, I really told her, huh?

“That’s because you can’t use a coffee filter in place of milk, silly.”

And that’s when I finally got it.  My world will never be the same.

“But…but…but,”  I stuttered helplessly.

“Exactly,” she replied.  Sadly, I was so confused at that moment that it took me a while to realize what she meant by that.

“But…but…but,” I continued, rather eloquently as my shattered mind tried to deal with this coffee sacrilege, “but MY coffee filters…”  That’s right, I actually said it in capital letters.  There I was laying claim to a trivial, nearly worthless item.  Don’t ask; I don’t have a clue.

“Don’t get all worked up,” she said, “we’re going to the store right now to grab some toilet paper.  I just left those in case there’s an emergency.”  And with that, she left.

Now I’m sitting here all alone trying to force myself to drink my cup of coffee.  It must be cold by now since I keep reaching for it and pulling back.  This is not going to be a good day.

Lesson Learned:

Never ask a question you don’t want an answer to.

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I’m going to share an embarrassing event with you that just happened to me the other night.  Of course, I’m trusting in all of you to respond to this with the dignity it deserves.  (You’re not snickering already, are you?)

Okay, let me set the scene here.  There’s my wife, my 21-year-old daughter, and I trying to pick a movie we can all agree on.  It happens once in a while, but I really wasn’t holding out much hope. I’m sitting at the computer having located a long list of movie titles and descriptions and reading them out loud one after the other in a continuous stream of words, making my total disinterest as crystal clear as I can.  Picture this going on and on through about ten or fifteen movie listings as my wife and daughter grow ever more annoyed with me. And then it happens…I hit the movie Teeth.

That’s right, there’s me being as annoying as possible, droning on and on, and I’m halfway through the last sentence before it dawns on me what I’m saying out loud to my family.  Then…dead silence.  See for yourself:

 TEETH
High school student Dawn works hard at suppressing her budding sexuality by being the local chastity group’s most active participant. Her task is made even more difficult by her bad boy stepbrother Brad’s increasingly provocative behavior at home. A stranger to her own body, innocent Dawn discovers she has a toothed vagina when she becomes the object of violence. As she struggles to comprehend her anatomical uniqueness, Dawn experiences both the pitfalls and the power of being a living example of the vagina dentata myth.

Of course, after that I tried to recover and go on reading as if nothing’s happened, but it’s far too late for that. They’re laughing their heads off behind me.  I’ve turned bright red.  There’s now no chance of going on without discussing this stupid movie.

Actually, there was no real discussion.  There was just me trying to think of rational things to say so that I could put up some pretense of not being embarrassed, and there was them making every comment they could to try and make it worse for me.

You feel sorry for me, right???  A little??  No?  Oh, sure, I get it.  You’re just that kind of crowd.    No, don’t bother trying to make up for it now.  I can take it.  I’m a man.  :(  Oh, poop…

Lesson Learned:

Read ahead, and pay attention, idiot!

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Welcome to the Man In The Moon blog, my last hiding place from a female world of flowers, chick flicks, periods and puberty.  You see, I’m a man who has spent an entire lifetime surrounded by females.  I was raised with my sister by my mother alone, and now I’m married and have three beautiful daughters who all live at home.  The daughters are aged eight, thirteen, and twenty-one and the wife’s age is never to be acknowledged in public.  It’s enough hormones and emotions for any guy to drown in.

You’d think that all this long-term exposure would grant me some kind of insight or understanding of women, but alas…no.  I find myself as baffled as ever by the behavior and foibles of females.

• How do women read the  exact same movie description or watch the exact same preview I do and still say that it looks like a good movie when, in fact, it looks like a slow, torcherous way to blow an hour-and-a-half of your life?
• Why do they purposely and painfully pluck hairs no one else will ever notice?
• What woman-hating freak decided that high heels were a good idea, and why do women still wear them when they don’t have to?
• What the heck are they always smearing all over their faces?

I’m the Man In The Moon, and I hope you’ll join me here in the one place I can ask the questions that all men want to ask and say the things that all men want said.  I have to have somewhere to save my last few shreds of male dignity.  Welcome again.

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