Mancave - column

I've been a man for as long as I can remember. That is not always an easy, but it is quite an interesting situation. Generally speaking, I no longer belong to the group of men who only use their soft side to sit on, but I am certainly not a man who constantly wants to share his thoughts or even worse, his emotions. But I try to live consciously and respectfully in my clumsy way. Only when really necessary do I use meaningful violence.

When I started living on my own I kept my housing and myself tidy. When I didn't go out to dinner, I cooked for myself. I also did washing and ironing. When love came into my life and home it only got better. After all, women are raising the bar. Where that went too far beyond my control, I gladly handed it over. I was completely freed from doing laundry when I took a large, soft woolen scarf out of the washing machine as a small, handy and quite sturdy napkin.

But living together and doing together has lifted my life to a higher level. I have learned a hope from love. Living together in harmony with a member of the more pleasantly sculpted kind is an enrichment of the uncomplicated male existence. You suddenly have to take a lot of things into account. But that yin / yang thought? There is something in it.

That self-reliance may also be genetic. When my mother passed away, my father made sure that he did not become a dirty old man. Because that is a lurking danger for us little boys. Unsupervised we can find a lot of things more important than the household or taking care of ourselves.

I once saw this happen to an acquaintance who, when asked by his wife, "What was more important, those motorcycles or me?" In the remainder of that answer, his wife left. After noticing that, he got his food from the Chinese and the snack bar. His employer took care of company clothing and washing it. But at home, in the garage, he counted the blessings of jeans and T shirts getting better as they get older and dirtier. As a crane operator in construction, little changed, all the more in his living environment. Contents of the garage moved to the living room. That gave more space for more stuff in the garage.

In the meantime, the run-up of tame and neat motorcycle friends had decreased considerably. That probably had something to do with the increasingly confusing situation in the garage and living room. Fortunately, there was still room in the former matrimonial bedroom after the two other bedrooms were also upgraded to storage areas. The people who still visited had no problem with the practical layout of the house and the fairly liberal litter box-changing schedule of the man who finally had all the time for his motorcycles. But those visitors all became increasingly eccentric.

That went on until the housing association had had enough. There was intervention, supervision, care and coaching. With a lot of manpower M / V the motorcycle enthusiast was massaged back into line. And he fell in love with one of the rescuers. That lady had seen where he was coming from and decided he wouldn't go that road again. She put him firmly in receivership. They have been a couple for four years now. There is an engine block in the room. There are two motorcycles in the shed. And the litter boxes are kept clean again.