Man Laws

Man Laws for the Holidaze

There’s a funny commercial series running now featuring Burt Reynolds and other men sitting around a table creating “Manlaws”, like “no fruit slices in beer”. I write a lot of columns from the women’s perspective, but I know men have a perspective too, however incorrect and misguided. I consulted with a few of my brothers and got their opinions on some holiday issues that surface this time of year. I have removed the obscenities, corrected the grammar and I’ll share these Holiday Manlaws with you now.

If you want me to carve the pumpkin, you can’t supervise or criticize. Also, two teeth are the limit I will cut out for a pumpkin’s smile, live with it.

Don’t show me a picture from a magazine expect me to be able to carve a designer pumpkin that looks like the picture. I cannot carve the Mona Lisa into a pumpkin!

Don’t tell me to take the kids Trick or Treating and then tell me not to let them eat too much candy! They are collecting a sack of candy! They will have a Hersey’s hangover by morning.

Just get accept it now - mittens WILL be lost tonight! I can’t keep track of two goblins, a ballerina, a zombie, and eight mittens all at the same time!

It wasn’t my idea to schedule a football game on Thanksgiving Day. You’re right, it breaks up family time. You’re right it’s horrible background noise for those conversing in the other room after dinner. You’re right I should have enough interest in my family to turn off the TV. You’re right about everything, okay? Now can I watch the game?

They say, everyone is entitled to fifteen minutes of fame. Let me have fifteen minutes as Head of the Household. Let me stand at the head of the table and carve the turkey without one word from anyone as to how it should be done, how they do it, how it was done by their father. It’s a dead bird and I have a large knife, I think I can take him.

Don’t make low calorie gravy or anything suggested by the American Heart Assc as Thanksgiving substitutes. There are no calories or cholesterol in a Thanksgiving dinner.

Give me three days to digest my Thanksgiving meal before you start telling me your Christmas decoration plans and how easy it will be for me to add a new wing by Christmas.

If you buy a Christmas decoration that has to be mounted on the roof, you mount it. Don’t buy anything that can’t be mounted from halfway up a ladder or lower.

If you want me to untangle Christmas lights, you and the children must leave the house. Untangling lights is one of the oldest forms of torture dating back to the Middle Ages. It comes in right after a root canal with no anesthetic and terrible rash in a place that can’t be reached. I am not responsible for anything I say or throw while untangling Christmas lights.

Clear an area for a tree and practice the art of silence. A tree will appear in the designated spot soon. As soon as I have the money, time, energy and rope. Nagging clogs up the area of a man’s brain where the To Do list is.

I don’t care how long it takes. The tree has to be plum. If it’s not straight, it will drive me crazy. You can’t obscure it with bulbs and tinsel... I’ll know it’s not straight. Just get behind the tree and turn it the way I tell you till I’m happy. For all the stuff you do that drives me nuts, you owe me this....

Please don’t buy any toys that need assembly. If you buy a toy that needs assembly, look at the directions. If you can’t read Japanese, neither can I. If you bring home a wagon that needs assembly and the directions are in Japanese, but you got it anyway because it was ‘on sale’ and you assumed I can figure it out myself, stop and pick up a bottle of Henessey’s as well. I may or may not be able to put the wagon together, but at least I’ll pass out before I try to kill you.

I can’t say it, because I know how much you love being a martyr, but I do like it when you decorate the house. I do love all the little things you do for the holidaze, but you didn’t hear it from me.