Bragging Rights

Unless you are bald, then I bet you didn't know it was possible to burn the top of your head! That being said, it should signify that I went on a manly trip this weekend!! How do I know that it was manly (other than the fact that I the used two exclamation points to signify just how manly it was)?

That's simple.

First, we camped out. That's right; among the sticks, stones, bugs and dirt of Mother Nature, we slept. I lit a fire, burned the hair from my hands and forearms, and alternated between breathing smoke and being cold.

Camping out is always very manly!

But that's not all! Yes, there's more!!

Some of us didn't camp out. The manlier (not "more manly" for those conjugation fools out there!) undertook the classic Road Trip. Thwarted by flight plans, plagued by delays and lost luggage, these brave souls slung themselves carelessly down a midnight run, past the Hour of the Wolf (between one and three a.m.), and through a picturesque sea of tranqulity (i.e. pitch black night with all sane traffic home for the night), all the time attempting to not wrap their car around a tree.

You know you are being manly when you try three times, unsuccessfully to wrap your car around a tree.

And the manliness hadn't even begun yet!

That's right boys and girls, this wasn't just another roughing it in the wilderness trek. Hell no! This was a white-water rafting down the Snake River. Any river named after the Judeo-Christian Old Testament embodiment of Satan has got to be manly. And after a full day of shooting the rapids (any time you can use the term "shooting" is always very manly) we were burned, cut, scrapped, waterlogged and exhauseted.

But we were MEN.

All except for one of us, that is. She's a woman. But she's also a woMAN.

Example: There is a Class 5 rapid called "Big Kahoona" (I had to look it up too!!). A word to the wise, when going through a Class 5 rapid without a raft (i put that in bold so you wouldn't miss that we didn't have a raft under us when we went through the rapid . . . very manly) one should always take a deep breath before the first wave covers your head. This has the added advantage that if you miss the very next opportunity to gasp for breath, you should have just enough air left to make it through the third wave before you pass out alternately from taking in too much river water or the hypothermia inducing temperatures of the river.

How did we come to be shooting (manly) a Class 5 rapid (super-manly) without a raft (ultra-manliness)?

I couldn't tell you.

Honestly!

Why would I encourage the group to shuck off our rather sturdy and otherwise safe water-craft (in this case a leaky rubber raft that we continually had to be filling with air even as we floated down the river), and venture into Big Kahoona with only our life vests between us and a raging river of certain death (our wits being left on the shore next to the raft in a neet pile)?

Let's just say that if I was made to testify in court, I would probably end up purjoring myself with that statement.

The truth is that men, especially those attempting to take the mantle of "manly men" need to be able to brag. They need bragging rights. They have to be able to say, over their fourth beer, with all the sincerity and honesty a man can muster (not currently measurable by scientific methods) that they have out-run, out-jumped, out-drunk, out-cooked, out-belched, out-farted, out-cut-their-arm-nearly-off-their-body before a comittee of similar "manly men" in order to be counted among such an illustrious group.

Why not just make it up?

Pa-shaw!

You can't make up manly events and still be expected to remember them while working your eight or ninth beer (beer drinking in excess is very manly). At some point, you're going to be asked if the story you told earlier in the evening is really true, and after a heavy bout of manly drinking, you're going to be lucky to remember if your head is still attached to your shoulders, much less if your I-killed-a-two-ton-bear-with-a-toothpick story actually has cohesion.

No.

Only the truth will do.

And then you must have a story worthy of bragging rights.

But next time, instead of bringing the manliness, I think I'll just bring the hot dogs.