learning is not compulsory, neither is survival

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There was a time when most men could turn their hand to just about anything; from growing their own vegetables to completing their tax returns, from plumbing to motor maintenance.  Yet I know some young guys who are so impractical they can’t even put up a shelf.  I once met a guy who didn’t know how to open the bonnet, (hood), on his car ~ let alone check the oil.  Hell, I once met a blonde girl who couldn’t open her fuel filler cap.

But we are not talking about girls here, we are talking about real urban survival skills for real men.  What does a guy need to be able to do to survive and thrive?  Leave out the whole surviving alone in the deep woods thing, (with a camera crew, doctor, and evac helicopter on standby).  Let’s concentrate instead on what a cool guy living a great life should be able to do, and most can’t even make a decent attempt at. In no particular order;

• cooking ~ from making an omelette to an impressive signature dish. including doing the shopping and cleaning afterwards.
• DIY ~ how to you loosen a bolt?
• finance ~ budgeting, balancing your income and expenditure, completing official paperwork, negotiating a loan.
• first aid and CPR ~ from the Heimlich Maneuver, to using a tourniquet.
• health and fitness ~ fresh air, diet, food supplements, exercise.
• motor maintenance ~ from checking the tyres, lights, and fluids to doing a complete exhaust rebuild, to building an entire damn car.
• navigate from A to B without sat-nav ~ can you find north, use a compass, read a map, know how far a mile is?
• read, write, and do arithmetic ~ do you read interesting and challenging books? can you write a letter in cursive script? Can you make change, approximate pi, and work out a right-angle?
• safety and security ~ is your home safe and secure and can you walk the streets at night?
• disaster recovery ~ what will you do if there’s an earthquake, or a wild-fire, or flood, or your home just suddenly becomes uninhabitable?

For once, I haven’t given you lots of links, because a man should be able to find appropriate stuff on the internet, and not just be able to find his own particular taste in porn.  So whatever you can’t do, start learning…..

There are a lot more things that a true Renaissance Man is capable of, from building and sailing a boat, to building a car, to building his own home from scratch.  In extremis a real man knows how to survive natural and man-made disasters.  There is even a list of 100 skills every man should know, (but no Englishman needs to know how to throw a good spiral).  And, a real man understands the art of attracting women and keeping her happy once he has won her.

Some say they don’t need to do anything because they can always hire someone else to do it.  And that guys don’t cook, clean, or do the laundry, real guys just have fun.  All I know is that I can’t bake a cake.

~

jack collier

jackcollier7@talktalk.net

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