Big Ugly Man Doll

It’s Friday, and answer time is coming to a close.  

It’s been a great run, but the Friday ManFAQ will be winding down as a regularly scheduled feature at the end of the year.  For those of you who have posted questions for ManFAQs, thank you – and for those who’ve provided comments, errata, and witty repartee, to you also, thanks.  Stay tuned to this station, though – your Fridays in 2012 may become more bizarre than you could have ever hoped for!

And so I hope that I have helped, in some small way, to demystify the more malodorous gender for those of the gentler.  Today I present the penulitamte question, posed by real women (several of them!), and answered by a REAL man. What could go wrong?

Question:   Why can’t he plan parties?  I spend weeks getting ready for his special day, birthday, anniversaries, favorite football game, holidays, whatever, but when the shoe is on the other foot, it’s 10 minutes of planning on the morning of, and he spends half that on the phone with my mother.  What the hell? 

Answer:    We don’t plan well, most of us.  It’s true. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are some guys who can out-plan and out-organize and out-do all of us plus Julie from the Love Boat – but those guys aren’t married to you.  They’re married to guys named Steve.

You’re having to make do with your man, flawed though he is, and you’ve run into one of his major limitations – The Future.  Unlike your anniversary, he really does know the date of your birthday.  And he probably knows what day it is today.  But without a good deal of prodding, the coincidence of “today” with “your birthday” is still going to come as just as much a surprise to him as your anniversary usually does. 

For most guys, The Future is sort of a bright, shiny, poorly defined place where nice things will happen, people will get naked, and there might be beer.  It just sort of happens, and when we stop to think about what’s going to be needed to make it happen, we get wrapped up in the visions of nudity and beer, and we stop thinking altogether.  Suddenly it’s that morning, and Oh Shit, somebody needs to plan something! 

Of course he calls your mom – his mom will yell at him, and he knows that he’s going to get yelled at later anyway, so he’s in no hurry to start now.  Your mom, on the other hand, will bail him out, because she wants to make sure your day is special, and she’s always happy to have a marker on him – she can make him dance like a puppet.   For his part, he likes your mom because she bails him out of these spots (at least a little), and because he thinks that she thinks he’s cute.  (Trust me, you don’t want to know what goes on in his mind.)

We don’t plan well.  The really smart guys know this, and keep enough “general party stuff” around the house to pull off a semi-respectable party in under 2 hours, and have the local cake place on speed dial.  He cares.  Really.  He just doesn’t know. 

Now you know. Please, feel free to comment! Also, forward any questions you’d like answered to BUMD – at – biguglymandoll.com!