Without getting all Pirsig about it, it's a treatise on the value of the manual trades.
Finally, someone is able to explain, in plain and simple language,why I like "tall men with useful skills." (It's right there in my profile, folks.) I always had a hard time explaining to my smarty-pants friends just what made carpenters, electricians, mechanics, redheaded pressmen, attractive to me. (Besides the oh-so-sexy plumber's butt, natch). Maybe I like them because I come from them (my brothers are auto mechanics), and it may explain why I get a little prickly when asked about my family, and people tend to fall silent or get that "oh, that's nice," false smile when I tell them my background.
Let's put it this way, when you're driving down the highway, and your car breaks down, who are you going to call? Your friend the college professor? Your toilet breaks, that person you spend hours nattering away about the meaning of life with probably isn't able to stop the backflow of shit into your bathroom. If you need bookshelves, waving your credentials at the empty space in the corner of your living room isn't going to get them built.
Okay, so I tend to be a little bit of a reverse snob about these things when it comes to men, sorry. If I like a guy and his first response to something breaking is "Let me see who I can call," rather than, "Let me see what I can do," I maybe like him just a teeny, tiny, little bit less. I look at a guy's hands to see if there's any imprint of some skill on them, maybe a scar or two, some calluses, or a broken or deformed nail from some mishap with a tool. Plump, soft, pink hands that look like they've never done anything more than turn the pages of a book or dial a phone, well, they won't get much past first base with me. If you think I'm shallow, well, too bad for you.
For me, it's not about what a guy can earn. It's about what a guy can do.
Matthew B. Crawford pretty much nails it in one here. He's the complete package: Philosopher (not the crude uneducated kind that overfed, overeducated intellectuals claim to esteem, but has a Ph.D. in philosophy) and motorcycle mechanic, with his own repair shop in Virginia.
Oh, and he's really, really hot.
8 comments:
He is hot! I have the same reaction to men who are clueless when things go wrong, esp with cars, maybe more of a reaction to my dad, who never could do anything handymanish and it drove my mom nuts. Competent men are just sexier.
It seems to have skipped a generation in my family -- my grandfather was a coal-miner, all around Mr. Fixit, and my dad was a manager, and my brothers are mechanics. It was always pretty funny when my brothers would be under the hoods of their cars and my dad would stand there saying, "You ought to do it THAT way," and my brothers would say, "If all you're gonna do is stand around and manage, go back in the house!"
I love the smells in mechanical places. Oil, gasoline, solvents, exhaust.
Thinking back on my sporadic romantic career, there was a thread common to most of the women of working on cars, enjoying it, or at least being willing.
(Can two out of three be "most"?)
One of my wife's favoritest Christmas presents is still the Milwaukee Sawzall I got her.
Ever walk around a wrecking yard? I will be so in love when I find a lady who truly enjoys doing that. (All right, my wife does, but we've raced that horse already.)
This is probably one of the social advantages to joining my particular B-Man theme camp: Maybe some of the gals who hang out sort of dig that people like me are off in the corner doing mysterious things with a bench vise and welding on shit.
Matt gave me a Sears Craftsman Drill with a 3/4" bit for my 30th birthday, because when he asked if there was anything in particular I was interested in I said, "I want a drill."
The Movado watch he got me a few years later? Strap broke and it fell down a sewer on 8th Avenue.
Well, I'm a total hypocrite: I don't know about any of it or want to; I just want the guy to be able to do it while I bake cookies. :)
My dad was not Mr. Fixit -- his daddy raised him to be a white collar college guy and didn't want him dirtying his hands. Grampa did all the fixiting for my father. Dunno if that has anything to do with the fact that all of the men who became important to me once I became an adult were at once engineering types AND knew which side of the table saw to stand on.
Having no regular man in my household these days, I've picked up the few skills I learned watching TUFKAS, and slowly started acquiring the power tools I need to do my own fixitting.
My dad thinks I'm crazy.
I think there's something to it skipping generations, but maybe not. My maternal grandfather, the Norwegian paint shop owner, was a formative force in my life with his handiness and ability to make anything out of anything, but then again he was a Norwegian when the country was dirt poor, and pretty much anyone who wanted anything had to make it.
I was always the more mechanical child, I lived to take things apart, put them together again, take them apart, put them together again, and repeat until I figured out how to make it work better. (I destroyed several slot cars this way.)
My wife's not this way, why has led to an increase in the "let's call someone" approach, mainly because she wants to get to spend some time with me too. I've got a honey-do list that could span decades.
So let that serve as a cautionary note before getting too goo-goo eyed over a handy man.
Maybe it's me, but I can get goo-goo eyed over a manly man who knows how to handle his tools with skilled alacrity while knowing he's going to be off in the shop doing his manly thang. I can be over here, doing my gekkoish thang. We can get together later for the hot weasel sex and in depth, meaningful discussion.
Or maybe sometimes we'll BOTH be in the shop playing with the tools.
But I'm not a "be with me 24/7" kinda lizard.
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