Although I'm attaching the link, I still intend to list (and dissect) the 2008 edition of 100 Essential Skills Every Man Should Know.
Link: http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/how_to/4281414.html
Automotive
1. Handle a blowout
2. Drive in snow
3. Check trouble codes
4. Replace fan belt
5. Wax a car
6. Conquer an off-road obstacle
7. Use a stick welder
8. Hitch up a trailer
9. Jump start a car
Handling Emergencies
10. Perform the Heimlich
11. Reverse hypothermia
12. Perform hands-only CPR
13. Escape a sinking car
Home
14. Carve a turkey
15. Use a sewing machine
16. Put out a fire
17. Home brew beer
18. Remove bloodstains from fabric
19. Move heavy stuff
20. Grow food
21. Read an electric meter
22. Shovel the right way
23. Solder wire
24. Tape drywall
25. Split firewood
26. Replace a faucet washer
27. Mix concrete
28. Paint a straight line
29. Use a French knife
30. Prune bushes and small trees
31. Iron a shirt
32. Fix a toilet tank flapper
33. Change a single-pole switch
34. Fell a tree
35. Replace a broken windowpane
36. Set up a ladder, safely
37. Fix a faucet cartridge
38. Sweat copper tubing
39. Change a diaper
40. Grill with charcoal
41. Sew a button on a shirt
42. Fold a flag
Medical Myths
43. Treat frostbite
44. Treat a burn
45. Help a seizure victim
46. Treat a snakebite
47. Remove a tick
Military Know-How
48. Shine shoes
49. Make a drum-tight bed
50. Drop and give the perfect pushup
Outdoors
51. Run rapids in a canoe
52. Hang food in the wild
53. Skipper a boat
54. Shoot straight
55. Tackle steep drops on a mountain bike
56. Escape a rip current
Primitive Skills
57. Build a fire in the wilderness
58. Build a shelter
59. Find potable water
Surviving Extremes
60. Floods
61. Tornados
62. Cold
63. Heat
64. Lightning
Teach Your Kids
65. Cast a line
66. Lend a hand
67. Change a tire
68. Throw a spiral
69. Fly a stunt kite
70. Drive a stick shift
71. Parallel park
72. Tie a bowline
73. Tie a necktie
74. Whittle
75. Ride a bike
Technology
76. Install a graphics card
77. Take the perfect portrait
78. Calibrate HDTV settings
79. Shoot a home movie
80. Ditch your hard drive
Master Key Workshop Tools
81. Drill driver
82. Grease gun
83. Coolant hydrometer
84. Socket wrench
85. Test light
86. Brick trowel
87. Framing hammer
88. Wood chisel
89. Spade bit
90. Circular saw
91. Sledge hammer
92. Hacksaw
93. Torque wrench
94. Air wrench
95. Infrared thermometer
96. Sand blaster
97. Crosscut saw
98. Hand plane
99. Multimeter
100. Feeler gauges
Truth to tell, virtually anyone with any sense will take a look at this list and immediatly chalk the majority of items beneath the heading 100 skills PEOPLE should know. Still, as much as we may prefer to believe otherwise, historically and traditionally we always have and in modern times we continue to merely expect men to just somehow know these things.
Imagine the aghast expression were a man to suggest that a woman change a dirty diaper and when she asked why he didn't do it he stated in tones absolutely reeking of expectation "But... you're a woman!"
So why is it that when it's time to jump a car, 99 out of 100 women will stand back and simply look at a man, waiting for the event to merely happen?
Okay, we all know there are women out there who do this stuff every day, women who would rather die under the Chinese Torture of 10,000 Burning, Salty Hells than to allow a man to so much as hold a door for them. Such being the case -- chill, this isn't for you.
As I've aged my observational skills, keen as they are (my wife has to occasionally remind me which food I don't like while browsing a take-out menu) have shown me that there are approximately two hundred and fifty-one septi-hepti-gazillion cool things out there which might have made my life easier had I known them. It is my intent to teach these things regardless of my child's gender.
(Editor's note: I had to walk away from this for a couple of hours and lost my train of thought; ergo, I'm stopping my inane bloviation for a while and will come back when it suits me.)
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Blog Opener...
The purpose of this blog is to provide a toolbox of sorts -- more specifically, a toolbox for men.
Once upon a time people had traditions which were gender-specific. Girls were taught how to conduct themselves by their mothers, grandmothers and aunts, as well as any friends-of-and-practically-family sorts.
Boys had fathers, grandfathers, uncles and older cousins along with male friends of the father, etc. There were dutch uncles, scoutmasters, et cetera.
My, how the times have changed. It's nothing today for boys and young men -- hell, for that matter even for older men -- to look around in dismay and wonder Hey, where are we going? And what are we doing inside this hand-basket?!?
People no longer really talk to one another and it's no surprise that kids are finding themselves left in the lurch on matters of real importance, things like sex, auto-mechanics, social skills, dancing, professional interaction, etc. Sure, there's the Internet; but who helps weed through this stuff and remove the garbage?
Moreover, as our times become more gender-confused, boys find themselves forced to rely on all the wrong sources because those are the only sources touting any semblance of confidence.
It's not good; it's just not.
A couple of days ago on MSN a list was published by some of the folks at Popular Mechanics, a list titled "100 things every man should know how to do" (or something like that). On said list were several things I already know how to do and many I do not, especially when it came down to the tool section.
Over the years I have oft lamented the numerous things I WISH I knew how to do and yet woefully lack within the confines of my education. Nearly two years ago I tried to get together with a bunch of the men in my new church group and compile a list of things which I felt it would be important to teach children, things both educational and (okay, everything is educational) based on Life Skills. Sadly, the guys at church made a couple of brief suggestions and then dropped the matter; after all, it made no sense to them why anyone would compile a list of everyday things which people are supposed to know -- and way too embarrassing to try and explain to them.
I was raised by the kinds of parents who liked to scream at me to get out of the way and then later berate me for not knowing how the hell to do something I'd never been shown how to do.
It makes life kind of rough, ya know? Worse still, it makes the Mating Game -- already plenty rough -- a complete nightmare. The only thing worse than not knowing how to do something at a critical moment -- meaning in front of a woman -- is standing there looking like a dud because some other guy's dad took the time to teach him, so he knows how to, say, repair the ripcord of a parachute in mid-fall rather than screaming and wetting himself.
He gets the girl; you get the emotional baggage that comes with failure, assuming you're still alive.
Don't get me wrong -- my dad taught me things when it suited him, lots of things; just never the things I was interested in, or things which later turned out to be terribly useful in life. He clearly knew any one of these given things because it's pretty common, even at this later stage in my life, for me to mention to my father that I've learned something new, whereupon he snorts derisively and says "You never knew how to do that? How could you not know that? Everybody knows that!"
All that being said, Life has proved to me that there are fewer gaps in my knowledge than there are yawning chasms, bottomless pitfalls of ignorance.
And bit by bit I hope to use this blog to help organize my thoughts on the whats, not to mention the whys and wherefores on some of those whats, cataloguing things I learn, things I wish I'd learned, discussing why those things might have proved handy to know -- and then slowly passing all this along to my son.
Sometimes these things will demonstrate a theme of sorts; other times it will be random flotsam injected into the mainstream of blog consciousness. Sometimes there will be lists, sometimes those lists will be broken down. Sometimes I'll relay some experience which brought a particular thought to my forebrain, other times I'll just blather on, relentlessly illustrating a point long after all the lines have been colored in.
If anyone, as a reader, doesn't particularly care for that, well... go write your own blog, eh? This one is mine.
Once upon a time people had traditions which were gender-specific. Girls were taught how to conduct themselves by their mothers, grandmothers and aunts, as well as any friends-of-and-practically-family sorts.
Boys had fathers, grandfathers, uncles and older cousins along with male friends of the father, etc. There were dutch uncles, scoutmasters, et cetera.
My, how the times have changed. It's nothing today for boys and young men -- hell, for that matter even for older men -- to look around in dismay and wonder Hey, where are we going? And what are we doing inside this hand-basket?!?
People no longer really talk to one another and it's no surprise that kids are finding themselves left in the lurch on matters of real importance, things like sex, auto-mechanics, social skills, dancing, professional interaction, etc. Sure, there's the Internet; but who helps weed through this stuff and remove the garbage?
Moreover, as our times become more gender-confused, boys find themselves forced to rely on all the wrong sources because those are the only sources touting any semblance of confidence.
It's not good; it's just not.
A couple of days ago on MSN a list was published by some of the folks at Popular Mechanics, a list titled "100 things every man should know how to do" (or something like that). On said list were several things I already know how to do and many I do not, especially when it came down to the tool section.
Over the years I have oft lamented the numerous things I WISH I knew how to do and yet woefully lack within the confines of my education. Nearly two years ago I tried to get together with a bunch of the men in my new church group and compile a list of things which I felt it would be important to teach children, things both educational and (okay, everything is educational) based on Life Skills. Sadly, the guys at church made a couple of brief suggestions and then dropped the matter; after all, it made no sense to them why anyone would compile a list of everyday things which people are supposed to know -- and way too embarrassing to try and explain to them.
I was raised by the kinds of parents who liked to scream at me to get out of the way and then later berate me for not knowing how the hell to do something I'd never been shown how to do.
It makes life kind of rough, ya know? Worse still, it makes the Mating Game -- already plenty rough -- a complete nightmare. The only thing worse than not knowing how to do something at a critical moment -- meaning in front of a woman -- is standing there looking like a dud because some other guy's dad took the time to teach him, so he knows how to, say, repair the ripcord of a parachute in mid-fall rather than screaming and wetting himself.
He gets the girl; you get the emotional baggage that comes with failure, assuming you're still alive.
Don't get me wrong -- my dad taught me things when it suited him, lots of things; just never the things I was interested in, or things which later turned out to be terribly useful in life. He clearly knew any one of these given things because it's pretty common, even at this later stage in my life, for me to mention to my father that I've learned something new, whereupon he snorts derisively and says "You never knew how to do that? How could you not know that? Everybody knows that!"
All that being said, Life has proved to me that there are fewer gaps in my knowledge than there are yawning chasms, bottomless pitfalls of ignorance.
And bit by bit I hope to use this blog to help organize my thoughts on the whats, not to mention the whys and wherefores on some of those whats, cataloguing things I learn, things I wish I'd learned, discussing why those things might have proved handy to know -- and then slowly passing all this along to my son.
Sometimes these things will demonstrate a theme of sorts; other times it will be random flotsam injected into the mainstream of blog consciousness. Sometimes there will be lists, sometimes those lists will be broken down. Sometimes I'll relay some experience which brought a particular thought to my forebrain, other times I'll just blather on, relentlessly illustrating a point long after all the lines have been colored in.
If anyone, as a reader, doesn't particularly care for that, well... go write your own blog, eh? This one is mine.
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