What makes a man?  I usually ask this question when sitting on a couch, watching a football game, drinking a beer.  Sometimes I can’t help think how the definition of manliness keeps evolving like the time a manager swung by my desk.

I always found him to be a sharp dresser, never a hair out of place.  Once, I stopped by his office and caught him polishing off road salt from his leather shoes.  Living in a respectable suburb, married to a college sweetheart, I would call him a regular guy.  But then he dipped into my supervisor’s cubicle.  She wasn’t around.  So, I asked if there was something I could do to which he replied, “No.”  He was just looking for a pair of clippers to remove a hangnail, which at the moment appeared to be driving him perfectly insane.

I gave a slight nod like I understood, but I wondered why the front teeth would not work.  Maybe such barbarity is now unacceptable.  But what kind of men have we become where one man confides in another about his nails?  Are we even related to the forefathers who fought the Redcoats, built the Empire State Building and stormed the beaches of Normandy?  Do you think Crazy Horse worried about his hair when  racing down on Custer?  Do you think Lewis and Clark brought enough hand lotion to keep their skin from chaffing?  Do you think General Douglas MacArthur hoped his teeth were white enough when he said to the Filipinos, “I shall return!” (Probably!)  Can I even pose these questions from the comforts of my couch.  After all, I have never:

• sported a mustache
• completed a Vision Quest
• hunted big game
• wrestled a bear
• thrown my fists in a donnybrook 
• broke a wild horse with pure guile
• worked the iron range
• panned for gold
• won big in Vegas
• lost big in Vegas
• dated a supermodel or one of her friends

I once practiced the martial art of Tae Kwon Do (Korean for “throwing out one’s back”) Most of the class was filled with women and most of the women were teenagers.  And even though I was able to defeat most of my female counterparts, it had to be one at a time.

The teenage years, isn’t that where it starts?  Isn’t that where the first steps of manhood are tested?  I remember such a test at the Minnesota State Fair.  It was at the midway.  I caught an off-guard glance of a teenage couple in a full embrace.  The reason?  A celebratory one for the teenage girl held a stuffed penguin in her left hand – a prize that the teenage boy won for some manly feat like shooting a BB gun, throwing darts or slamming a giant hammer onto a scale without hitting his foot.

Even though the moment involved two gangly teens, it was picture-perfect:  the black and white penguin dangling from the girl’s left hand, her back arched, right hand around the thin nape of the boy’s neck like a WW II photograph where the first kiss maybe the last, as if the teenage boy was going to climb into a faulty bungee-cord ride and accidentally launch himself into the setting sun.

It is scientifically understood that girls develop at a quicker rate than boys.  In my case this fact was amplified.  The girls in my junior high class already had full figures.  A few of them were on their second marriage.  Around them I felt like the annoying friend of their little annoying brother, catching quick glances as they stretched in their seats.  And the only emotion I could express in their presence was muted paralysis.  And this stoic fear started as guarded caution when it came to Sandy a few years before.

Sandy was not only my fourth grade classmate.  She was a neighbor.  She was also a foot taller than me, a towering figure, like one of those Amazon women in a B-grade movie.  She was so tall, she was taller than her older brother, which pleased Andy none.  I’m sure Andy tortured Sandy, letting her know that he didn’t appreciate ending up in the shallow end of the gene pool.  And for some reason Sandy focused all of her aggression on me.  Besides the proximity of being neighbors, our inverted sizes and me being new to the neighborhood, I don’t know why Sandy zeroed in on me. I never said a word to her.  I never teased her about being a walking ladder.  Maybe she was acting out a deep-seeded battle with her brother.  Or maybe Sandy was feeding off my own inability to grow up and turn the around scene.

It definitely was an embarrassing site to have a girl trying to pummel you.  Every time Sandy started to make her move, I made sure to keep three steps ahead.  What else could I do?  It was like a tree was coming at me, and how do you fight a tree?  So I ran, more of a jog.  There was no urgency.  Not in a million years would Sandy’s lumbering gait overtake me.  So I trotted, giving the appearance that I wasn’t so much running away, but heading home.  It may have looked that way.  I could have even convinced myself that it was.  But in the end Sandy knew and that’s all that mattered.

The lack of machismo carried on through junior high and on towards college.  After all, there was no magical transformation where a burly forest of hair sprouted from my chest, my voice dropped an octave and everybody started calling me Earl.  It was more of the same, but this time taunts came from those who were much older.

I had a work assignment in the college cafeteria.  And when one is employed as a student worker, the person is going to get the jobs the regular staff does not want to do, namely the washing of dishes.  I’m not talking about the plates, glasses and silverware that you run through a machine and call it a day.  I’m talking about the industrial size pots and pans covered in grease and caked in grime.

This was my charge.  But before I touched a pan, I donned on as much insulated rubber as I could find to protect myself from the scalding water needed for the assignment.  And as the boiling steam rolled up from the stainless steel sink and fogged my goggles, I tried to ignore the caustic laughing from the cooks.

It was definitely a shot to the ego to be laughed at by a bunch of grandmothers.  To most of them hot was a term they used whenever one of the basketball players passed through the serving line.  Hot as a temperature held no meaning.  I discovered this on the first day when one of the cooks (I’ll call her Midge) yelled at me for using water that I described as lukewarm, but she called “Baltic Sea Snot.”  She quickly drained the sink and turned (H) all the way to HELL.  And after dumping a cup of industrial soap, she plunged her right hand deep into the steamy foam, pulled out a pan and said, “That’s how remove grease.”

My heart jumped for I expected to see her hand pulsating red and purple, but the craggy paw looked no worse as she waved the clean pan in front of my face.  Obviously, every nerve from her neck to fingertips was dead from years of handling boiling, steaming and burning heat.  And though Midge had the hands to mold lava and I had the hands to fold satin sheets, there was no way I could let her set the tone.  So without hesitation I plunged my right hand into the foamy waters.

I don’t think the tip of my middle finger cleared the twelve inches of foam before every synapse in my body told me that I was being burned alive.  I snapped my right hand out of the water, looked over to Midge and with a slight chuckle said, “My writing hand.”

Midge looked back at me with no other desire than to hold my head underwater.

I knew what I had to do and I knew it would bring a significant amount of pain.  Still, I took a deep breath, clenched my teeth and plunged my left hand into the foam.  Even though every natural instinct told me to stop, I plunged my arm further and further.  I was absolutely determined to grab something.  At this point in my college career embarrassment at the expense of the cooks’ laughter would leave a far more lasting scar than a trip to the emergency room.  But no matter how brave my attempt, I knew that my body’s natural instincts would override my idiocy.  I knew I had about .00356 seconds to find a pot or a pan.

When my hand hit the bottom of the sink, it furiously searched for any handle.  And when it latched onto a red-hot, cast iron pot, any definition of what I believed to be hot wildly exploded as I retracted my left arm 897% faster than .00356 seconds.

“Mother F#@&er,” I screamed.

Midge shook her head and walked away.

It was a hard fact to dispute.  At that moment I was not living up to the word manly.

As I sit on my couch and sip on my beer, I wonder where it all went wrong.  Was it poor genetics, lack of effort?  As a kid, I played a lot of sports but never really trained.  By the time I entered college I had the body to prove it.  I weighed no more than a broom handle with the external fortitude of a late October scarecrow.  An afternoon breeze could have knocked me over as I hobbled on crutches to my freshman class.

A summertime soccer injury sidelined me for the year, but I still wanted to stay active.  Since any sport involving running and jumping was out of the question, I decided to take up weightlifting.

I signed up at a local wellness center and had my choice between lifting free weights and using the Nautilus machines.  Nothing but a few feet separated my choices, but the difference was lifting weights and thinking you were lifting weights.  Free weights produce results immediately.  Nautilus gets you back in installments.

Since I was in no hurry to bulk up, I decided to go the Nautilus route.  So I dedicated myself to a daily routine and went in early. (Early for a college student is anytime before 3pm.)  I was determined to eliminate any distractions and give the workout an honest try.  With machines that worked the arms, back, legs and chest, I wanted build myself into a Norse god before the holidays.

I may have gone in with good intentions, but I was by no means a match for the equipment.  The Nautilus machines caught me off guard and started to fight back.  Immediately, my workout started to become a bargaining session.  If I wanted to do twenty reps, but the machine only wanted to give me ten, I was more than happy to do eight. I’ve always been an ebb and flow man.  And resting on the Nautilus machines with the early morning (2 pm) sun shining on my face, I was in too good a mood to argue.  I did the routine the machines were willing to give.  It may have been a workout that saved the wear and tear of the equipment and helped clear my mind, but my body never benefited from the negotiations.

A trainer zeroed in on my lack of effort.  He was preparing to enter the Marine Corp., and saw an opportunity to spread some “Ooh Rah!”  So he jumped into my foxhole, barking for me to do ten more reps when I was perfectly happy with five.  Instantly, a peaceful workout turned into an improvised boot camp.  No longer did I reside in a tranquil world of pretending to lift weights.  I was in a firefight with gravity as I kicked, groped and tried to come up for air.  I was acting out the role in a B-grade movie, except the Marine-to-be was no officer and I felt no need to be a gentleman.

As the workout continued, I slowly began to feel that my body would not.  My muscles were not becoming big and bulky, just inflamed.  Every joint ached.  I had serious thoughts that I would not survive the session.  Some course of action needed to be taken before I was reduced to the physical activity of a New England clam.  So when the Marine-to-be shouted for me to commence on the bench press, I asked for a brief leave.  I was granted a five-minute water break and pealed myself off the bench.  When I reached the hallway, I hobbled past the water fountain, found the nearest exit and headed out the door.

I guess some part of me was grateful for the Marine-to-be.  He really wanted to help, but we had different workout philosophies.  He believed in an all-out attack.  I believed, like shuffleboard, working out should be easy enough to do all day.  Of course, the Marine-to-be had better philosophy and body to prove it, but what about me?  It was unfortunate that I wasn’t born with a more imposing figure for there was only one trade I wanted to join.

Every kid has a dream about what he or she wants to become as a fully insured adult.  Most kids dream about becoming a fireman, a doctor or long-range weather forecaster for NOAA.  My dream never reached this level of grandeur.  I wanted to work for a moving company.  I wanted hands the size of baseball gloves.  I wanted wrought muscles that extended into my fingertips.  I wanted an ironclad spine.  I wanted a solid chest.  I wanted the physical grace to move a piano so carefully it remained in tune.  I wanted to drive down a prairie highway in a cab so high, I could see the Rocky Mountains.  I wanted to pull a haul big enough to fill the Smithsonian.  I wanted to treat each and every possession like a precious heirloom.  I wanted the responsibility.  I wanted the action.  I wanted to get to work.

Unfortunately, most moving companies do not hire right out of kindergarten.  So I had to bide my time.  To prepare I practiced rearranging items around the house until my mom got tired of finding the TV in the kitchen and the microwave on the TV stand.  So any practice had to wait for school.

Whenever there was a school assembly, volunteers were needed to move folding chairs from the storage closet to the gymnasium.  Even though I was the size of a house plant, I was still the first one to jump in line.  I grabbed a metal folding chair, hoisted it above my head and walked it down the long hallway into the gymnasium where the instructor pointed to a spot where I quickly opened the chair with a SPAP and planted it with a BAM.

Throughout the years these assembly assignments became my happiest days in school.  No longer sitting and learning.  I was up and moving.  The experience brought an electric charge. I felt alive. I was meant to do this.  And with my elementary ascent, I started to move two metal folding chairs– one under each arm.  Although not impossible, carrying the two chairs did provide a challenge.  No longer was I able to dash back and forth with a SNAP and a BAM.  Instead, I needed full concentration to keep the chairs nestled underneath my armpits as I walked almost on my tiptoes to prevent the hard rubber stoppers from squeaking against the highly polished floor.  But eventually my muscles would tire, my shoulders would droop and the rubber stoppers would SQUEAK and SCREEEEEEEEECH, causing everybody to look and see the chairs were not so much being moved as propping me up like a pair of rectangular crutches.

By the time I reached junior high, the moving of the metal folding chairs kicked to another level when a few of my classmates started putting two folding chairs under each arm.

In one fell swoop, they doubled their workload and made the rest of us obsolete.  But how could that be?  Was it not my desire to become a professional mover?  How could that be if I could not perform this simple task?  Still, I had to try.  So I eased one, then two folding chairs under my left arm.  And with a little luck, I leaned the other two folding chairs under my right.  And with pure adrenaline, I lifted the four chairs off the ground without the assistance of an illegally banned substance.  I then darted out of the storage closet, but as quickly as the burst came, it dissipated.  My arms burned.  My shoulders drooped.  Already on my tiptoes I gingerly negotiated each step like I was walking through a minefield.  But there was no way.  I was not going to make it.  So I pulled my body to the side and leaned the chairs against the wall.

Calamity had been avoided, but devastation remained.  Certainly, no homeowner would let me touch an antique china hutch if they knew I couldn’t move four folding chairs.  Even though I was only in eighth grade, there was no way my body could cover that much ground.  My destiny was set.  My vision held a limited arc.  Right there in a long, darkened hallway a sober reality settled in me.  My mind wanted to move freight trains.  My body was telling me to get excited about selling men’s clothing.

Well I didn’t become a haberdasher.  Instead, I mostly work at a desk and stared at a computer.  I can’t say this destiny was my dream, but I can’t say my dream fully died.  For little did I know how many opportunities I would get to move family and friends for FREE!

Although far from a profession, I still leapt at the chance to help people move.  I even felt an electric charge when I saw the moving truck.  After all, cannot one dream on a smaller scale?  Cannot one feel like he is helping change people’s lives as he grabs one leg of a sofa?  Cannot one feel like he’s on top of the world when he climbs into a rental truck?  Cannot one still feel a sense of manliness that connects him to his ancestors when he lifts a box of linen above his head and eases it out the door?

As I try get up from the couch to find another beer, I find the urge to move things still remains, but maybe it was best it never came to fruition.  My shuffleboard philosophy may not have provided bulk, but it has so far kept me from chasing pain pills with vodka.  Physical moderation throughout the years has kept me in shape and pain-free.  That would have never happened if I didn’t listen to my reed-thin composition and pursued an all-out attack.

And as I begin my slow descent of becoming a tinier and flintier version of myself, I have started cutting back on manly feats that would land me in the emergency room.  Now I am more than comfortable saying no to:

• Sowing 40 acres with a plow and a mule
• Moving a walnut dining room set
• Shoveling wet cement onto a driveway
• Ripping ceramic tiles off a roof
• Pushing a stalled car through a flooded intersection
• Canoeing dried goods across a stormy lake
• Building a medieval church
• Welding a towering skyscraper
• Fighting off a pack of wolves
• Branding a bull

Also, don’t call me Earl.