Listen up, there's a nasty rumor going around, and I'd like to put a stop to it.

Yes, I've agreed to settle down and get married, but despite what all my single friends say, that does not mean I have become a total wimp. Sure, I get to bed at a decent hour and I haven't been arrested since the engagement, but I'm just saving up for the bachelor party.

So America, no matter what you've heard from my single friends, I am still manly, virile, and daring. Also handsome, but that addresses a different accusation I'm also tired of hearing about. (Got that, Mom?)

Who cares if my future wife cancelled my Playboy subscription, and so what if I occasionally dress nicely and go out to a fancy restaurant for dinner? That doesn't make me a wimp — I have Playboy delivered at work now, and if that doesn't prove I'm daring I don't know what would.

Heck, a week ago, an old woman with a creepy hump-back cut in front of me at the grocery store checkout line, and despite my clinically diagnosed fear of hump-backed old ladies, you better believe this manly, virile, daring man didn't let her get away with it. I looked right at her and gave her the finger after I got back to my car and had safely locked all the doors. And now that I'm having hump-backed old lady nightmares again, I don't wake up in a panic and cry like a wuss. I lie there and bottle up my feelings, like a man.

You may think I'm settling down, but in point of fact, I'm settling up. Settling up with all the people who bet there'd never be a woman who could make an honest man out of me. (Seriously Mom, you'd better be listening to this.) See, I'm still the same guy who woke up in the front yard more often than in his own bed, and I'm still the same guy whose greatest goal in life is to teach a monkey karate (but not to teach him well enough to keep me from kicking his butt in a fight). It's just that I've entered a phase in life that would scare the chest hair off a lesser man.

Take owning a home, for example. Countless opportunities exist for a man to prove his bravery when he owns his own home, and I'm not just talking about the strength required to face a monthly mortgage payment.

Some people (the Hollywood types) measure bravery by how many alligators you've wrestled, or how many venomous snakes you've captured with your bare hands. But these people never saw the huge, angry spider I found when I replaced the aluminum siding on my house last summer. I will admit the hairy, eight legged-monster caused me the briefest moment of surprise, but shrieking and flapping my wrists like a bird was a calculated effort to SCARE THE SPIDER. And it worked, because the roughly lapdog-sized spider fell off the house in fear, not (as my future wife insists) because the spider was laughing too hard to hold on.

I had time to think about real manliness this morning as my left hand was submerged to the elbow, fishing a fork from the garbage disposal. They don't award the Congressional Medal of Honor for risking your hand down the Waste-O-Matic, but when you consider that I flipped the light switch on, even though I often confuse the light switch with the switch for the garbage disposal right next to it, perhaps they should.

Why, just yesterday I drank a glass of milk even though it had expired that very day. AND I ate raw cookie dough! (I don't know if raw cookie dough is bad for you, but I want all my single friends to know that my future wife made cookies and they aren't getting any.)

I hope this puts that nasty rumor to rest. Officially, I'm no more of a wuss today than I was before I got engaged. And if you don't believe me, I invite you to tell me to my face. So I can send my Playboy subscription to YOUR work address.

Copyright © 2007 Andy Murphy
Please do not remove the copyright from this work.

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