by Dave Barry
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
I’ll Mature When I’m Dead - Introduction
The Elephant and the Dandelion - (A Defense of Men)
If You Will Just Shut Up, I Can Explain - A Man Answers Questions from Women
The Heart of Dadness - A Letter to a First-Time-Father-to-Be
Dance Recital
Technology
Solving the Celebrity Problem
Tips for Visiting Miami - No. 1: Are You Insane?
Dog Ownership for Beginners
My Hollywood Career - The Big Dumpster
Chapter 24 - The Ultimate Script
The Full Coward Package
The Health-Care Crisis - Wash Your Hands After Reading This
Colonoscopy
A Practical, Workable Plan for Saving the Newspaper Business - I Sure Don’t ...
Judaism for Christians
Fangs of Endearment - A Vampire Novel
A Festival of Grimness
Father of the Groom
Also by Dave Barry
Fiction
Peter and the Sword of Mercy (with Ridley Pearson)
Science Fair (with Ridley Pearson)
Peter and the Secret of Rundoon (with Ridley Pearson)
Cave of the Dark Wind (with Ridley Pearson)
The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog
Escape from the Carnivale (with Ridley Pearson)
Peter and the Shadow Thieves (with Ridley Pearson)
Peter and the Starcatchers (with Ridley Pearson)
Tricky Business
Big Trouble
Nonfiction
Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far)
Dave Barry’s Money Secrets
Boogers Are My Beat
Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway
Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down!
Dave Barry Turns 50
Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus
Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs
Dave Barry in Cyberspace
Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys
Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up
Dave Barry Does Japan
Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need
Dave Barry Talks Back
Dave Barry Turns 40
Dave Barry Slept Here
Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits
Homes and Other Black Holes
Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage and/or Sex
Dave Barry’s Bad Habits
Claw Your Way to the Top
Stay Fit and Healthy Until You’re Dead
Babies and Other Hazards of Sex
The Taming of the Screw
PUTNAM
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York,
New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East,
Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa)
(Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2010 by Dave Barry
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada
The essay “Colonoscopy” originally appeared in
The Miami Herald, in somewhat different form.
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote e-mail text and use “Shark Photograph” by Sandy L. Goodrich
“Sphere” image 2007 © Pedro Tavares. Image from BigStockPhoto.com
“DNA” image 2007 © Pawel Szczesny. Image from BigStockPhoto.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barry, Dave.
I’ll mature when I’m dead : Dave Barry’s amazing tales of adulthood / Dave Barry. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-18727-2
1. American wit and humor. I. Title.
PN6162.B’.54—dc22
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
This book is dedicated to everybody who buys this book. Without you, I would have to get an actual job.
I’ll Mature When I’m Dead
Introduction
When a man reaches a certain point in his life, he feels a need to pass along the wisdom he has gained to younger generations. Of course the younger generations pay no attention; they’re busy tweeting podcast YouTube blog apps on Facebook, or whatever the hell they’re doing these days.
But if the Internet ever goes down and the younger generations have some spare time, I hope they read this book. It’s a group of essays I wrote, mostly based on the theme of what it means to be an adult.
“Hah!” you are saying. “What would YOU know about being an adult? ”
That’s a fair point. In my long career (1887-2005) as a newspaper columnist, I was not known for being the voice of maturity. I was known for being the voice of discussing what would happen if a cow exploded on a commercial airplane flight.1
But since I stopped writing my weekly column, some things have changed. For one thing, there was a serious economic recession. Was this because the nation was devastated by the loss of my column? Modesty prevents me from speculating. But, duh.
For another thing, I’ve had time to reflect. A lot of people think that all I do in retirement is sit around watching TV, drinking beer, and passing gas. My wife thinks this, for example. But when I appear to be an inert sack of flatulent flesh on the couch, I am in fact reflecting, at least during commercials.
And when I’m not reflecting, I’ve been having significant life experiences. In the past few years I watched my son get married; watched my daughter play many soccer matches and perform in ballet recitals lasting longer than the Spanish-American War; got a dog named Lucy; rode in a fire truck with Clarabelle the famous Walt Disney cow;2 had some medical adventures involving direct medical assaults on some of my most personal regions; took up spinning; ran for president; nearly won the Nobel Peace Prize; and spent the equivalent of the gross national product of Uruguay on veterinarian fees in an effort to repair a persistent injury to Lucy’s tail caused by the fact that she wags too hard.
These life experiences, plus my reflections, were the inspiration for the essays in this book. With one exception, they have never been published in a newspaper. They’re longer than my weekly columns were, because I wasn’t limited by rigid newspaper length limits (currently seventeen words per column, u
nless they are big words such as “refrigerator”). This meant that, in writing this book, I was able to “stretch” artistically—to go beyond simply writing a few booger jokes on a given topic, and instead write literally dozens of booger jokes on a given topic. Yes, it was a lot of effort, but if these essays help you in some way—by teaching you something useful about relationships, or parenting, or just getting through this crazy thing we call adulthood—then I for one will be surprised.
Throughout this book, I have tried to be as honest and accurate as possible, except when I am lying. I take full responsibility for everything you are about to read; any misstatements or errors of fact are solely the fault of global climate change. In conclusion, I hope you enjoy this book, and if you come away from reading it with just one message, let it be this: If a veterinarian suggests that you can somehow keep your dog from wagging its tail, that veterinarian is smoking crack.
The Elephant and the Dandelion
(A Defense of Men)
My wife has a friend whom I will call Bernice. (That is not her real name. It is not anybody’s real name.)
Bernice is an attractive, smart, funny, middle-aged single woman who would love to be in a committed relationship with a man. My wife knows approximately 1,700 attractive, smart, funny, middle-aged single women who would love to be in a committed relationship with a man. (I don’t mean with the same man.) (Although at this point they might not rule it out.)
Several times a week, after talking with one of these women, my wife delivers a rant (it runs about seventy-five minutes, including a bathroom break) about how WRONG it is that there are all these attractive, smart, funny, middle-aged single women out there, and they CAN’T FIND A MAN. My wife has a theory about why this is, namely: Men are idiots.
My wife believes that men tend to have insanely high physical standards regarding the kind of woman they’re willing to settle for. She notes that a middle-aged man can have tarantula-grade nose hair, b.o. that can cause migrating geese to change course, and enough spare tissue to form a whole new middle-aged man, but this man can still believe that he is physically qualified to date Scarlett Johansson.
“What’s wrong with these men?” my wife asks purely rhetorically. “Don’t they have mirrors?”
It is true that men can appear to be superficial about what qualities they seek in the opposite sex, as shown in this scientific chart:
But does this mean that men are nothing but a bunch of shallow low-life sex-obsessed horn dogs? Yes. But men have a solid scientific excuse: biology.
As we know from attending high school, the human body is actually made up of trillions of tiny one-celled animals called “cells,” which clot together to form important organs such as the spleen, the jowls, and the goiter. Every single human cell contains “DNA,” which is a special molecule that your body leaves behind at crime scenes so the police can identify you. But DNA has another important purpose: It contains your “genetic code,” which enables you to pass along to future generations your distinguishing characteristics, such as hair color, age, hating the Yankees, etc. There are two crucial facts you need to know about DNA. The first one is:Your DNA is in charge.
You may think you are in charge, but you are not. Your relationship to your body is the same as the relationship between a coach and a soccer team of four-year-olds. The coach can shout all the instructions he wants about kicking the ball, but if the players prefer to stand around picking their noses, they will stand around picking their noses. Likewise, your body does not do what you want; it does what your DNA wants. This leads us to crucial DNA fact number two:The only thing your DNA thinks about is reproducing itself.
Your DNA wants to put its imprint on the entire human race, like the Nike Corporation. This goal is shared by both male and female DNA molecules, but they achieve it in very different ways. To understand the difference, let’s take a look at actual photographs of two DNA samples. The first was taken from a woman:
This one was taken from a man:
If we look closely, we can see subtle differences between these molecules, the main one being that the female DNA is more complex. The reason is that in order for female DNA to reproduce, the female it occupies—this is crucial—has to have a baby. And even if she starts really early and is a total slut, she can only have a limited number of babies. And even after she has a baby, if she wants her DNA line to continue, she has to nurture that baby until it can survive on its own, which with modern human babies does not happen until they are in their mid-thirties.
So for human females, reproduction is a very complicated and drawn-out process. It can take her weeks just to find an acceptable maternity bathing suit. Then there’s all the paraphernalia she must buy for the baby—the stroller that costs as much as, but is more technologically advanced than, a Toyota Celica; the adorable little teensy baby shoes; the cute designer baby outfits that the baby will fill with poop.
Now a rational person, by which I mean a man, might ask whether the baby really needs all these things, especially the shoes, since the only thing babies do with their feet, once they discover them, is cram them as far as possible into their mouths.
But a rational person is not making these decisions. The woman’s DNA is, and it is taking no chances. For whatever chemical reason, it is convinced that the baby needs cute little shoes, so the baby WILL have cute little shoes, just as the baby’s room WILL have wallpaper festooned with cute little baby animals. If you try to stop a severely pregnant woman from providing these things for her baby, she will crush your skull with a Diaper Genie. This is not personal. She’s obeying her DNA, which is doing what it believes it has to do to nurture her child—or, more accurately, her child’s DNA.
As the child grows older, the woman continues to engage in behavior that may seem irrational to a normal person. A good example is birthday parties. These are considered by most women to be a vital part of child-nurturing, which is why every year, when my daughter’s birthday comes around, my wife becomes—and I say this with the deepest affection—a dangerous lunatic.
I’m not saying our daughter shouldn’t have a birthday party. I’m just saying I could organize one in an hour. I’d order some pizzas, get a cake at the supermarket, organize some fun party games for little girls—“Run Around Shrieking,” “Run Around Shrieking Some More,” etc.—and boom, there’s your party. I’m not saying it would be the greatest birthday celebration ever. For one thing, it would be roughly a month after my daughter’s actual birthday, because I am not good with dates. But it would get the job done.
My wife, on the other hand, believes the party should be along the lines of the Super Bowl halftime show, but more elaborate. Her birthday parties always have themes. One year the theme was The Wizard of Oz, and among the props she found on the Internet (including a piñata shaped like a ruby slipper) was a “yellow brick road,” which consisted of a roll of extremely slick yellow plastic, which she instructed me to unroll on our front walk. It was raining, so I pointed out, in a very reasonable tone, that if we put slippery plastic on the already-slippery sidewalk, people could get hurt.
Did you ever see the movie Species, in which what appeared to be an attractive woman was actually a camouflaged alien reptile creature who could kill a man by sticking her hideous reptile tongue into his mouth so far that it came out through the back of his skull? When that creature was about to strike, it had exactly the same facial expression as the one on my wife when I suggested that maybe we should not put out the yellow brick road. Her view was: Yes, people might get injured, perhaps even killed, but the theme of the party is The Wizard of Oz, and by God we are going to have a yellow brick road. And so of course we did.
The nurturing instinct is not limited to children. It causes women to engage in a wide range of other behaviors that men find unnatural, including:• Giving gifts and/or thoughtful cards for virtually every occasion including the onset of daylight saving time;
• Thinking about relationships;
• Tal
king;
• Not really caring about offensive rebounds;
• Worrying;
• Buying scented candles the size of fire hydrants.
The list goes on and on and on. A typical woman’s brain is swarming, night and day, with vague feelings of guilt caused by the nagging worry that somebody, somewhere in her vast complex network of family and friends needs more nurturing. That’s why she’s in a bad mood.
Men are a whole different biological story. A man can’t have babies, of course, so the only way his DNA can reproduce itself is if he gets a woman pregnant. The thing is, the man’s DNA’s odds improve if, while the first woman is off buying tiny unnecessary shoes for her future offspring, he gets another woman pregnant. In fact—and remember this is the DNA thinking, not the man—the more women the man gets pregnant, the better the odds that his DNA will survive. He is genetically programmed to attempt to mate with pretty much any available woman or reasonably soft object, then move quickly along.
So to summarize: A woman is designed like a female elephant, with a long gestation period followed by years of mothering; whereas a man is designed more along the lines of a dandelion, which randomly spews large numbers of seeds all over the place, then pretty much forgets about them. Neither the elephant nor the dandelion is “right.” They’re both perpetuating their DNA, but they’re biologically designed to use very different strategies, which is why you so rarely see a meaningful, long-term, mutually fulfilling relationship between an elephant and a dandelion.
This brings us back to Bernice. Remember? My wife’s attractive, middle-aged single friend who would love to be in a committed relationship with a man? We’ll use her as our example of why it’s pretty much hopeless. Bernice is, like my wife, a sportswriter. A while back they were at a major sporting event, and Bernice revealed to the other women sportswriters that in several days she was going to go on a blind date for lunch. So the other women sportswriters wished her luck and went back to work.
