There
are many types of men. There are ingenious men, effeminate men,
chessplaying men, steel-driving men, and men who play electric guitars.
Some men wear derby hats and play pingpong, and others comb their
filthy sideburns while whistling tunelessly. It’s a hell of a thing.

I
think my point is that it would be pointless to assign traits to ALL
men, seeing as there are so many endless combinations of beliefs,
abilities, and mental illnesses a single “man” can possess. But that
doesn’t stop people from trying: Men drive cars like this! Men love to
fistfight! Men never ask for directions! Men eat corn chips! Men open
cans of soup by heaving them at obstructions!  It’s obscene. But
anyway, now comes the part where I tell you about one of the manthings
I don’t know anything about: Fixing Cars.

I
know almost nothing about cars. Know why? It’s because I don’t give a
shit about cars. Cars are boring. I don’t know how to change the oil, I
can’t change a tire, I probably couldn’t even change the battery if I
needed to. The problem isn’t that I can’t
learn. I just don’t feel like it. My motto in life has always been “The
more things I know how to do, the more things I’ll have to do”. So I
don’t learn how to do anything. It saves me trouble.

I pop
open the hood and what do I see? Plastic Tubes. Wires. Boxes. A bunch
of metal stuff. “How does that thing work? Where does that tube connect
to? Where’re the cylinders? How do you remove the air filter? Is it
alright for that thing to be covered in that stuff?”

Screw it. Don’t care.

Just
leave it be. I don’t know how any of it works, and I don’t want to
know. And I’m sure as hell not about to reach my hand in there and find
out, I would probably just mess it up even more. Anyway, it’s grimy in
there, and I hate getting dirt on my hands.

And so…

If I
don’t learn about cars, nobody’ll ever expect me to work on them. I
just bring it to the shop. Let someone else deal with it. Too much
work. I’ll pay, what do I care? 25 dollars? Take it. Take 50. As long
as I can sit in an air-conditioned lobby eating skittles and watching
Judge Mathis while somebody else does all the work, I’ll be happy to
remain BLISSFULLY ignorant of car repair, thank you very much.

Do
these sentiments make me any less of a man? Perhaps in the eyes of
certain types of people. Middle aged men in torn overalls. Teenaged
boys shouting from the windows of purple muscle cars. Sullen truckers
sucking from a meth pipe. Women with closely-cropped hair. They all
look down on me.

But I don’t care. I don’t care what any of
those fictional stereotypes I just created say. Not knowing how to
perform basic auto maintenance may make me astoundingly lazy, sure, but not any
less of a man.

Thank you.