Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Welcome to the story of my life.
Let’s start with the basics.
Like who am I?
Oh, I know you know that I’m the comedian who came up with “Here’s Your Sign” and that I’m a member of the cast of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour and Blue Collar TV. I’m the one who’s not Jeff, Ron, or Larry the Cable Guy. Yeah. That one. That’s me.
But who am I really?
That’s what I’m about to tell you. I’m a little nervous because I know what’s coming. I’m about to reveal some stuff that’s very personal, a little bit embarrassing, and sometimes kind of strange. I think there’s a decent chance you’ll chuckle once or twice. You might even tear up. Hopefully not at the same time.
Now, a couple things you should know about me before we get started.
First, I’m unbelievably normal. Unlike many comedians and serial killers, which my dad considers the same thing, I don’t come from a screwed-up, crazy family. I was never smacked around, molested, or locked in a fruit cellar. Sorry. I’m pretty much the boy next door, the kid riding his bike down the street, the guy on the other side of the classroom. Okay, I’m the one with the chalk up my nose, but only because the teacher’s putting me to sleep and I’m trying to amuse myself until the bell rings. So that’s me. You know me well. You’ve hung out with me after school, gone to the movies with me, played ball against me—and if you’re a girl, you’ve probably ignored me.
The second thing you need to know is that I’m a guy. Been one my whole life, which makes me anexpert on the subject. As my wife, Gail, says, “You’ve been doing research for almost fifty years.” True. My lab is my life.
So let me clear something up right here. This might shake your world if you’re a woman, but I can’t help it. This is an indisputable scientific fact:
All guys are the same.
Doesn’t matter if you teach college or drive a forklift. A guy is a guy. Nothing we can do about it. Now, in case you’re not a guy, here’s the dictionary definition:
A person who doesn’t think before he speaks.
We just don’t. We can’t. Our brains are not wired to think. The truth is we’re not that deep.
A guy has only three basic needs: eating, sleeping, and sex. That’s it. That’s our whole day. I know a lot of women don’t believe it, but it’s true. If you see a guy thinking really hard, chances are two of his basic needs have been met and he’s trying to figure out how to take care of number three.
“I ate, I slept . . . where can I get me some sex?”
The one thing we’ve got going for us is that we have an excuse when we do something dumb. If Gail catches me doing something lame, which has happened occasionally in the twenty-four years of our marriage, I’ll just look at her and shrug.
“Sorry, honey, I’m just a guy.”
Part of being a guy is that I don’t care about the same things my wife does. Like balancing the checkbook. She reconciles it every month, and if it’s off by one penny, she’ll get out the calculator and go through the check register until she finds it. With me, if it’s within a hundred bucks, cool, it’s balanced. Next problem.
Sometimes being a guy makes us vulnerable. For one thing, the marketing people are on to us. They know we’re guys, and they take advantage of us. It ticks me off. I know there’s nothing I can do about it, but I try to fight my little battles by letting them know that I know what they’re doing.
Like taking advantage of how we smell.
Let me ask a profound question.
What is the difference between cologne and aftershave? Take a moment.
Give up? I’ll tell you.
There is no freaking difference.
Same stuff, different bottle. It’s just marketing. It’s like the difference between a comb and a brush. Which is? Not that much. They both do the same thing: move your hair from front to back, back to front, and back again.
What’s amazing is that somehow we’ve been duped into buying both cologne and aftershave. Because as a group, guys just ain’t that particular about grooming. My day is not ruined if I don’t get a shower right off the bat. I can work out, come back, and shower later. Gail doesn’t get this.
“How can you not shower? You just worked out.”
“Well, yeah, but the sweat’s dry.”
I don’t need to shower to go out to lunch. I’ll just throw a ball cap on and go. Gail cannot be that spontaneous. If I say, “Hey, let’s go out for lunch,” she’s lost.
“Now? I haven’t done my hair.”
“Put a ball cap on. Let’s go.”
“I can’t—”
“You look great. Come on.”
Naw, it ain’t happening. It just can’t. The first clue is inside the medicine cabinet. Just check out the difference between a woman’s medicine cabinet and a guy’s. I’ve got shaving cream, my razor, toothpaste, and cologne. That’s it. Gail’s got facial washes, powders, makeup, creams, hair sprays, mousses, gels, and body lotions. CVS has less stuff. It’s astonishing. She always looks good and smells good, and I swear it’s natural. To me, she doesn’t need anything added to go out. But she feels she’s gotta do a makeover to go out and get a sandwich.
The way Madison Avenue gets to us is to market stuff that makes us think we’ll get sex. For instance:
There’s this new body spray. You’ve seen the commercials. A guy sprays this stuff on and suddenly he’s got dozens of girls climbing all over him. Yeah, right, I believe that.
I bought some.
On the off chance that the stuff works.
I sprayed it on and walked into the kitchen, where Gail was balancing the checkbook, agonizing over fourteen cents she couldn’t find. She looked up, sniffed the air, and made a face like I’d dragged in a dead animal.
“Something smells.”
“It could be my new body spray.”
“Body spray?”
“Yeah,” I said, edging closer to her. “It’s supposed to make me hot to you.”
She fanned her nose trying to kill the smell. “You’re stinking up the kitchen. And get away from me. Whoo.”
Not exactly the result I was hoping for.
But it does prove that guys will try anything to take care of our three basic needs. Actually, as you’ll see, lathering myself up with body spray is mild compared to most of the stuff I’ve done in my life.
So sit back, relax, put your feet up, and come along for the read.
Copyright © 2007 by Bill Engvall. All rights reserved.
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