The thing is, men don't plan very far ahead. Rex came into the living room at around 6:00 and said, "Hey, Eric's coming over in an hour cuz his wife's out of town and he's bored - cool with you?" Eric's awesome. I didn't mind at all. I freaked out a little bit, though, because 7:00 is clearly dinner time, and Eric's wife was out of town, which means one thing - he wanted dinner.
"What am I supposed to cook?" I asked, doing a mental inventory of what we had in the house that could be ready in an hour (Probably only mac and cheese or bagels. Possibly bagel-mac-and-cheese sandwiches. Could I say it was the latest craze in New York? Probably not.) Rex looked at me like I was nuts. "Um, we're getting pizza and beer, obviously. It's what men do."
Oooooh. So it was a MAN NIGHT. Now instead of inventorying my kitchen, I inventoried which friends I could randomly crash on a Saturday night in order to avoid Man Night. One of my friends has her in-laws in town, my other friend said she and her husband were in a fight so I shouldn't come over (eeek!), my other friend was up north for the weekend....and that's basically all of the last-minute drop in friends I have. It was settled: I was going to crash Man Night.
Rex and I went out to get the pizza, and Eric brought the beer. We got Little Caesars (ew), and he brought Miller Lite (also ew). I like wine and pasta better, but hey - I'm usually doing a girls' night. This one was a first for me. I considered possibly even burping at the table, but eventually decided against it.
As we ate pizza and drank beer, Rex and Eric started talking about man things. Their first topic was fishing rods. Eric wanted to know what kind of new rod to get. Something about a 5/6 or some mumbo jumbo that I didn't understand. Rods have sizes? Like shoes? Because I'm good at talking about shoes...
Eric said he's currently fishing with a graphite Shakespeare. I pictured a pencil and a copy of Hamlet. Rex said that Gander Mountain has some good rods. He's been thinking of getting a new one himself (news to me). I wanted to cut in with, "I've heard St. Croix is really good," because I wanted to sound smart about fishing, but I couldn't tell if that would sound smart or dumb. See, I know that St. Croix is a really good rod, but I didn't know HOW good. What if it was like, stupid expensive good? What if it would be similar to these guys talking about buying budget cars and I come out with, "I've heard Maseratis are nice..." That would sound ridiculous.
Imagine my frustration when Rex said, "You know what I really like? St. Croix." I wanted to yell, "I WAS SERIOUSLY JUST GOING TO SAY THAT!!" but everyone knows you can't say that afterwards or you just sound dumb (I WAS going to say that, just for the record). Blast. Opportunity missed. Soon after that, Rex talked about working in the fishing department at Gander Mountain today. He said, "This guy wanted to buy a bait casting rod and saw off the trigger so he could use it with a spinning reel!" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Apparently that was SUPER HILARIOUS, because Eric and Rex burst out laughing like we were at a comedy club. I laughed nervously and took a drink of beer. What on earth does that mean?! Isn't every rod a bait casting rod? Isn't that the WHOLE POINT of a fishing rod? To cast bait? And since when does a rod have a trigger? We don't shoot fish... Is the trigger that clicky button on kid-sized fishing poles? WHAT IS A FISHING TRIGGER?
I didn't ask any of this, of course, because I had to play it cool and not ruin Man Night with my feminine inadequacy. They talked about split-shot and cranks and lead weights...basically a lot of things that sounded like they came from a torture chamber and not a fishing department. I understood maybe about half of it, I pretended to understand another fourth, and the last fourth I just stared blankly ahead and mindlessly chewed pizza.
When the topic moved on from fishing, we started talking about hunting. Rex is going to a grouse convention next weekend (because apparently that is a real thing, ladies and gentlemen), and he talked about how excited he was that Grouse Dude and Other Grouse Dude were going to be there. Don't ask me to remember their names. I have no idea. Eric seemed adequately impressed, and I attempted a genuine "Wow." (Time for another slice of pizza? I think yes). Rex mentioned that he found fresh grouse poop in the woods last week, and that was very exciting. (Never mind...I don't want the pizza.) Rex mentioned that he and I put up two woodcock last week when we ran Ruby. Eric looked impressed. I smiled humbly. I didn't tell him that I actually have no idea what a woodcock even looks like, and it could have been a robin for all I knew. I just saw a flappy thing and said, "Look! A bird!" and Rex was all, "Wow! That's a WOODCOCK!" and I felt very pleased with myself.
After dinner, I excused myself to "go get things done" so that the guys could have legitimate man time to talk about whatever men say when women aren't around (maybe their deep feelings...or maybe just farts...who knows?). Anyway, I don't actually feel like cleaning anything, so I'm writing this blog post instead. Oops, sounds like Eric's getting ready to leave. He just thanked Rex for the "za and barley pops," which is apparently man language for "pizza and beer."
Oh my. I have so much to learn.
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