It’s a good thing women are in charge of decorating.

Each house in America would have the “Dogs Playing Poker” series on the living room walls if the guys had our way.

But humor me for a moment. What if men were given permission to have things our way? Would the world be that much different? That much worse?

I submit to you, that without ever talking to each other, with no collusion or complicitousness, men would make changes around the house – dare I say – the world, to make the universe more manly.

To start, men would have hidden compartments all around the home. Each secret compartment would open only with the handprint of the man.

There would be at least 50 hidden spaces in every house, with every fifth housing a can of WD-40.

Most noises in the home can be quieted with a can of WD-40. The ones that can’t can usually be quieted with jewelry.

Other secret compartments would include a TV remote, beef jerky, cash, a cordless DeWalt drill set, controls for an excellent stereo system, and for emergencies, a gallon of Braum’s chocolate ice cream.

The latter would be a refrigerated secret compartment, which also could house a stash of meatloaf for midnight sandwich making.

Other ways men would make the home more man friendly is a magic cleaner machine by the back door. This would be a large door that opened wide enough to hold anything wives deem too dirty to wear or bring into the house.

The magic cleaner machine would accommodate boots, work gloves, jeans, ball caps, or anything else that typically elicits a response of, “Hey, what do you think you’re doing? You’re not coming in the house wearing that nasty (insert name of item here).”

Men would also have every light switch wired so that no more than one light could be on at a time. If a family member leaves one room and turns on the light switch in the next, it would turn off the previous light.

This would prevent men from perpetually having to go through the house and turn off every light while saying, “I’m going to have to outlive the rest of y’all so that there’s someone still around to shut off all these lights.”

The bathrooms would also see changes. Each one would include a dispenser of Go-Jo or other degreasing hand cleaner, a urinal, and a large shower that also doubles as an auto parts cleaner.

The shower would have a large bench seat that, when lifted, would reveal a parts cleaner that’s big enough to accommodate a pair of valve covers from a 1972 Oldsmobile high-compression 350 V-8.

In a man-improved home, the bedroom also would have a few upgrades.

In the middle of the king-size bed, there would be a console from a 1976 GMC truck. The cup holder would be large enough to hold a 32-ounce drink from Sonic, and a medium bag of pork rinds.

The console would also hold extra TV remotes in case the man didn’t want to get up and go find one in the hidden wall compartment down the hall.

On the back porch, men would build beverage taps into the outer walls of the house. There would be buttons on each tap that would switch the preference from sweet tea, to coffee, to an unlabeled button that only worked when the man was home all by himself.

That button would also only work with his fingerprint.

Men know this isn’t realistic. But we can always dream. I do have plenty of WD-40 on hand. But I need to improve the jewelry supply.

I suspect I’ll need it after my wife reads this in the paper.

 

©2022 John Moore

John’s latest book, Puns for Groan People, and his books, Write of Passage: A Southerner’s View of Then and Now Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, are available on his website – TheCountryWriter.com, where you can also send him a message and hear his weekly podcast.