My dark secret

A Confessional

There are certain traits that define the man. Historically, society has stereotyped men as the protectors and the providers. Sure, we’ve evolved considerably and the gender divide isn’t what it used to be, but I would argue that most men still cling to an ideal of what it means to be a man.

I would like to think of myself as a real man, but the truth is that l fall short of my own masculine expectations. I’m now ready to reveal this dark secret to the world.

Of course my wife has known my dark secret for years but, as she reminds me of frequently, she didn’t know this about me when we were married. While she hasn’t been able to make the “breach of contract” argument stick yet, the shame from being regularly reminded of my manly failings stings.

I realized my problem at a young age. I blamed my father who also possess the same genetic defect. For some reason, however, my younger brother came out “normal.” Yes, he’s all man and seems to prove it every weekend undoubtedly flaunting it just to spite me.

I’ve spent most of my life committed to living a lie. I hid my deformity as best I could. I pretended I was normal. I tried to fake it. But inside I knew I was living a lie. Inside I was living with disappointment and shame.

In my own version of a 12-step program, I’m now ready to take that first step. My name is Greg Harris and I’m not handy. While real men are good with their hands and can design, build, fix and repair, I’m inept and incapable of all of the above.

I haven’t stopped trying to be handy, but my efforts are feeble, costly and typically end with a sub-par result that is left worse than when I started. In my own very small way, I had a recent breakthrough.

My 10 year old car’s rear windshield wiper has cursed me since I bought the car. While I’m clever enough to replace the front blades (with some struggle), I’ve been baffled by the rear blade. In the past…oh, this is really hard to admit… I’ve had to take it to the dealer to replace the blade. But I decided I had enough of this curse and that I would take a stand against on my own lack of manliness. Bulging with false confidence I tackled the problem anew with a new vigor. Sadly it took only minutes before all that melted away unable to figure out how to even remove the old blade. Depressed, I decided to eat and drowned myself in a manly brisket sandwich. That’s what I needed because while eating I got the idea to Google my problem. Sure enough I found a 1 minute and 38 second video made specifically for my car to teach people how to replace the rear windshield wiper. This was huge! I watched it twice was initially comforted by the fact that it had over 34,000 views, but quickly concluded that this video had never been viewed by a real man. Nevertheless it worked. Within the hour I had replace my own rear wiper blade! I could have sworn that my voice dropped an octave in the process.

March 22, 2017