One of the most difficult aspects of my life is grappling with the fact that I know more about the television series Star Trek then I do how to do the laundry, or repair a leaky pipe, or one of a thousand other infinitely-more-useful things normal men do in their daily lives. I am exaggerating slightly, because I do know how to do laundry properly, but I am largely ignorant of the things that define what it is to be a man. At least by a more classic definition of men circa 1950. I suppose I have modern social justice and Title IX to thank over the past twenty years for reclassifying gender roles and attributes. If anything, I can now get away with being a pansy sissy-boy in public, and it’d be socially acceptable today.

It’s not that I have no desire to want to know how to build things, remodel kitchens, or renovate bedrooms, it’s that I have had no physical impetus to do so over the last fifteen years. When I graduated high school, I moved into my father’s house to attend community college classes. When I changed colleges I moved into my mother’s house. When both stopped tolerating my need to run an Apache web server, even after offering to pay for its usage myself, I moved into an apartment with friends. I hopped around apartments for nine years before finally buying a house with my wife last year. So I’ve had no need to ever learn these things because I’ve had no use for them. Sure, I could have still learned them, or, worked on other people’s places or apprenticed with someone, but that was not my intention by-trade. I wanted to be an IT consultant or engineer, so I worked towards that end. But as it turns out, Back to the Future’s take on 2015 isn’t all high-tech, dehydrated Pizza Hut, and images of Ronald Reagan while you dine out. For as much high-tech as we use today, not everyone’s home requires a 2U rack-mount server running 2012 with 12GB storage. At best, the most you’ll get is a big LCD and an Apple TV box. All the tough stuff, the plumbing, the gardens and the retaining walls outdoors, the electrical on your deck, all either have to be done yourself, or someone else do it. And let’s face it, we may have changed how we perceive a lot of things in 2015, but the reality is the man, the husband, is still expected to possess the knowledge of power tools and know-how to get this all done.

Well you’re into electronics, right?

Right. Electrical. Motherboards. Same thing. Oh, and I’ve never soldered anything in my life before. I’ll just turn in my geek card now.

I imagine most people would ask me why I did not just marry another nerd and let the jocks do all the work. Certainly if you make enough money, someone else can deal with your shit and leave you free to level your warlock with your significant other’s mage all night. The answer is complicated. Sure, another nerd might placate my nerd centers of the brain, give me someone to talk weeaboo bullshit with that isn’t a monitor with avatars, or someone to appreciate all my fisting jokes as they relate to Symphogear. My wife remarked awhile back that she doesn’t mind the fact I watch anime, but that I am always blogging about anime or engaging social media about anime. Oddly enough, my blog post average is down to about two posts a month barely and my Twitter feed is mostly retweets. But the core reason for doing those things is a need for unwarranted self-importance. I don’t have anyone around me locally I can bullshit about cartoons, so I reach out online. She feels good when she watches garbage television. I feel good when I watch garbage cartoons and play garbage video games. We all have our guilty pleasures, and as it turns out, they’re slightly more aligned to 2015 than they are to 1965.

But it’s been my observation that I cannot deal with people like myself. Living in my first apartment was a hard lesson in what it’s like to live with people who just do not care and assume someone else with do everything for them. I did a lot of the cleaning, and it got to the point where I could not live with them anymore because they had no respect for me, or themselves. My wife and I are polar opposites, and yet somehow we work well together, probably because it’s more effective for opposites to play off each other’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s one of the reasons I think the old-world concept of men doing men things and women doing women things worked for the time, because you had the strongest players in their strongest roles. But this was at a time when the family unit was largely man, woman, and children. Today’s landscape is much different, and requires people to possess skillsets that compliment their living situation. Men have to learn household chores, and women have to learn basic carpentry skills. Or, as I mentioned above, you hire someone else to do it. But most of us lack that kind of money all the time. We either hike up and do it ourselves, or find friends or family who can help us out. Others may not have that kind of support network.

I know there are a lot of things I cannot do. But I pride myself on being someone who can figure things out and get it done. Mistakes will be made along the way, but that’s why I have more patience than my wife or most people I know. Winding yourself up over things is not conductive to one’s inner sanity. It seems passive, but then it’s hard to find a solution when you’re kicking the problem into the dirt and peeing on it in retribution.