The Green Red Green (23 page)

Ram it as many times as necessary until it looks like the picture
.

You need a front door with a doorknob right in the middle. These doors were extremely popular for about nine days in the early sixties, and you’ll need to find a house built during that time to
find this type of door. The easiest way is to tell a real estate agent that you’re looking to buy a house with the front doorknob in the middle of the door. When he takes you through one, check the walls for a calendar that has the vacation trip to Opryland marked, so you’ll know when to drop back around to get the door. Install it in your own house and then remove the doorknob, leaving a hole in the centre of the door.

This next step is a little dangerous because you have to drive on the highway. At night. Without your headlights on. Don’t come back until you have two of those triangular yield signs. Take an adjustable wrench with you. And have a really interesting story to tell the highway patrol, just in case.

Using duct tape, attach the yield signs to the door as shown in Diagram C.

The wad of duct tape at the point works as a hinge. The strips of tape to the corners prevent the signs from swinging out too far. Once they’re attached, flip the door over and let the signs swing into place as shown. The door is now a patio table
.

Remove the pair of awnings from the windows. You can use either a screwdriver or an adjustable wrench, or if you’re pressed for time, the boat anchor technique is always quick and effective. Next, duct-tape the awnings together and slide them over the bent antenna and down into the doorknob hole as shown in Diagram D.

You’re now ready to enjoy a full summer of outdoor entertaining. When winter comes, simply reverse the steps and move indoors.

Beautiful patio set in summer

Normal house in winter

I
know a lot of guys my age are dyeing their hair. That’s fine. I think it’s important for people to look their best. But there is a risk involved. Anything you do to make yourself look younger, if successful, will attract younger people to you. Younger friends and co-workers and even potential love interests will gravitate toward you, and that could create problems. The friends and co-workers will want to do things that are completely outside your experience. You’ll be in trouble. You can’t fake skydiving. And it’s even worse with a love interest. You can’t fake anything. And the last thing you need is a young girlfriend who will cut into your hair-dyeing time. With luck, she’ll actually turn out to be a woman your own age who also dyes her hair. That will give you both a common interest and something you can do together on the weekends.

I
’ve always had difficulty with the phrase “Forgive and forget.” I think it’s a great idea, but it’s one of those phrases—“I promise I’ll respect you in the morning” is another—that seldom happens. I’m just not spiritually evolved enough to forgive and forget. I was feeling bad about that until I realized that it’s not really necessary to forgive
and
forget. All you have to do is forget. If you can forget that somebody did something, that’s good enough. You don’t have to forgive them, because you have no idea what you’d even be forgiving them for. This has given me new hope. Forgiving has always been difficult, but forgetting is something I just seem to get better and better at.

I
’m looking to buy a new car in the near future, and it’s turning into a real life moment for me. I’ve started to realize that since they’re making cars that last ten years, I won’t need a whole lot more of them. That changes everything. That means I’d better make sure I get a car I feel good about. I don’t want to end my days in a Yugo. No, I’m thinking I’d better get that sports car I’ve always wanted. The clock is ticking here. So I went looking at Corvettes.

I noticed the salesman trying to look away as I struggled for a full five minutes to get into the vehicle. But that was like a blink of an eye compared to the time it took me to get out. And while I was in there—lying about three inches off the ground in the prone position—I didn’t look like a macho racer at the Indy 500. I looked like an old guy on a stretcher. People would think I was driving my grandson’s car.

And on the self-preservation level, bad things happen when
reflexes like mine are going more than a hundred miles an hour. I’m calling the salesman today and ordering a small, gutless sedan with plastic doors and airbags. Please don’t say, “You are what you drive.”

I
’m having a problem with my closet these days: it’s full of clothes that I never wear. I spent an hour or so looking at the situation, trying to figure out what went wrong, and it seems to be a combination of factors.

First of all, there are the clothes that my wife has bought for me. These tend to be at the stylish, suave, Euro-dork end of the spectrum, and they’re always bought when she’s been to a movie or read a romance novel and has forgotten what I look like.

Then there are the clothes that I bought while shopping with my wife. These purchases are always made in a hurry, without trying anything on, and for the sole purpose of satisfying her and getting out of the store as quickly as possible. They may look nice, but they rarely come anywhere near to fitting me.

Then we have the small group of clothes that actually fit me. I refuse to wear these because they’re made for a much fatter, older man.

That leaves us with the clothes that I actually do wear, and they’re all at least ten years old. They tend to be a little tight, and sometimes I have to suck in my stomach so hard that I get back spasms. But I hate to throw them out because guys like me prefer a wardrobe that’s been lived in. So instead, I came up with a plan. All I need to do is meet a guy my age who’s my height and age but ten pounds heavier. Then I’ll throw out everything I have now and buy all his old clothes.

I
f you’re like me, you hate to throw anything out—boxes, string, or automobile engines. I have an engine out back that I could take down to the scrap metal dealer and get a few dollars for, but it wouldn’t be worth my time to load it into the back of the truck and drive all the way down there. So what do we do with an old engine? Well, before you drive to a provincial park and dump it down a ravine, let me show you how one motor can outfit your whole kitchen.

Everybody who has space between their teeth likes corn on the cob. And parts from a car engine can give you an interesting way to serve it. Use a couple of valves as cob holders and fill up the valve cover with melted butter. Or 10W-30 if it’s to go.

The air filter makes a handy saucepan for frying. And of course the lid comes with it. If you tighten the wing nut on there, it makes it into a pressure cooker. Just imagine it bursting at the seams with the smell of pressurized yams.

And I don’t care how far you go, you’re not going to find a better roasting pan with a built-in drain plug than the crankcase cover off the bottom of the engine. You roast a turkey in that and you’ll taste the difference, believe me. It’s greasy eatin’, but it’s good eatin’.

If you’re serving soup to a large number of guests, the exhaust manifold cuts ladling to a quarter of the regular time. Just line up the exhaust ports on the manifold with your four soup bowls and pour the soup down your own tailpipe.

And you were going to throw all this out! Where else are you going to find a free set of kitchenware that has over a hundred thousand miles on it? That’s unique, isn’t it? And Mother’s Day is just around the corner.

N
ot all the differences between the sexes are simply to do with fashion, haircuts, and male oppression. Even the most ardent feminists will agree that men are physically different from women. And as the French say, “
Vive la différence
.” Which translates to “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.” (See now, some women wouldn’t find that funny. That’s got to be biological.)

According to scientists (real scientists, not those actors wearing lab coats in the laxative commercials), women and men have physically different brains. More of a woman’s brain is devoted to processing words, while a man has more of the grey matter working on shapes and geometry. That’s why men have trouble describing what they want and would rather just build it and then throw it out if it’s not right. That’s also why they have trouble explaining what went wrong, whereas their wives seem to be able to name all kinds of stupid mistakes.

You can see the many areas where men are superior by studying their behavioural patterns.