Men Are Pigs. Women Are Idiots.

By Bruce Culp

I dedicate this book to God and my reasons are specific.  You gave up your own son’s life Jesus Christ that I might live in eternity; you chose to trust me with three of your prized, sweetest and most beautiful angels named Wren, Mabry and Jackson!  God, thank you for selecting Phoebe as their mother.  She has held together what this “pig” could have easily have destroyed.  And finally, thank you for my sweet mother who saved my life, Catherine.

Chapter 1

Superman

By Five For Fighting

I can’t stand to fly

I’m not that naive

I’m just out to find

The better part of me

I’m more than a bird...I’m more than a plane

More than some pretty face beside a train

It’s not easy to be me

Wish that I could cry

Fall upon my knees

Find a way to lie

About a home I’ll never see

It may sound absurd...but don’t be naive

Even heroes have the right to bleed

I may be disturbed...but won’t you concede

Even heroes have the right to dream

It’s not easy to be me

Up, up and away...away from me

It’s all right...you can all sleep sound tonight

I’m not crazy...or anything...

I can’t stand to fly

I’m not that naive

Men weren’t meant to ride

With clouds between their knees

I’m only a man in a silly red sheet

Digging for kryptonite on this one way street

Only a man in a funny red sheet

Looking for special things inside of me

Ok, bear with me if it sounds a little silly, but I really wanted to be just like Superman.  The only negative thing I could see about Superman was that when he was finished doing his Superman stuff, there was usually a big mess to clean up!  But, instead of staying around for that part, (the details), he would fly off and say “Up, Up and Away”, zooming into the distance with everyone around him cheering and blowing kisses. 

The “Pig” that I am after 45 years of selfish and self-centered behavior is somewhat like his (with a few minor revisions):   

“ Ok, there appears to be a crisis here!  I can fix this!  I’ll save the day!  But wait, why aren’t any of these people asking me for help? Don’t they know of my superpowers and my ability to make most situations better? Well, I’m going to rescue them from this situation whether they like it or not!”

This is where the insane differences in my outcomes as compared to Superman’s work would take place.  Like Superman, when I deemed that the situation was better (or as good as I was going to fix it), my swift, overly-dramatic departure was followed by shouts like “Please don’t come back”, “We didn’t even ask for help”, and the occasional “Things are worse now than before you showed up!” 

((Note: I’ve chosen to leave the curse words out of this book so that I don’t offend anyone and to display some maturity, but trust me if I inserted the foul language used by me and at me over the years, this would grow from a small book of my observations into a !@#$%!* novel!))

On more than one occasion, I would simply hear the word “PIG!”  My first thoughts were usually wondering why they would say that after all I had done for them.  Pig?  Having grown up in a small, Mississippi town, I knew what a pig was, and I was certainly not like that.  So finally one day, I grabbed a dictionary to find some definitions of the word “Pig”.   It said the informal definition was, “A person regarded as being pig like, greedy, or gross.” And the slang definition of the word was, “A member of the social or political establishment, especially one holding sexist or racist views.”

“Greedy?!  Gross?!” So then I looked a little further, and found the definition of the word “Greedy” and it said, “Excessively desirous of acquiring or possessing, especially wishing to possess more than what one needs or deserves. Wanting to eat or drink more than one can reasonably consume; gluttonous.  Extremely eager or desirous: greedy for the opportunity to prove their ability.”   Then, “eager” me, feeling confused, decided to look up the definition of the word “gross”.  It stated the slang version of the word was “Brutishly coarse, as in behavior, crude, offensive; disgusting, lacking sensitivity or discernment, unrefined, dense.”   

I had to face the facts:  I qualify as a pig. 

Chapter 2

Pigs

Let Me Down Easy

Chris Isaak

Here she comes

Don't say anything

At first you smile, then turn away

I've been thinking of what I should say


All last night I stayed up dreaming

I'm still dreaming, I look at you

I'm just a guy, I know my place

But still I'll try

You must be tired of people asking

But I'm still asking

Please, Oh please let me down easy


Please, just let me down easy

Don't you hear my heart is calling

You don't know how hard I've fallen for you

Another day, you're passing by

Today's the day I'm gonna try

You don't know how much I'm hoping, how I'm hoping

Please.... Oh, please let me down easy

Please just let me down easy

Can't you hear my heart is calling

You don't know how hard I've fallen for you

If you told me to follow you know I'd fly to you,

Here I go, I may fall but I will try

So please, let me down easy

Please, just let me down easy

Please, just let me down easy

If you want me to follow, you know I'll fly

~

The pigs I had seen as a child liked to eat slop and wallow in the mud. 

I like to eat.

I don’t like to eat slop.

I don’t wallow in the mud. 

I do occasionally wallow in self-pity, denial, selfishness and anger. 

Does that mean I’m a pig?  Isn’t “pig” a little extreme?  I take some responsibility for my behavior, but I didn’t get here all by myself.  I now know and am convinced that selfishness and self-centeredness was at the heart of this label of “pig”.   Some other emotions that I can add to my list are pride, fear, arrogance, envy and shame.  Shame is at the end of my list for a reason.  It was the last emotion I discovered in my search for a way to live comfortable as a pig. 

With the help of some close pig friends, I learned that deep down inside my heart, where few people can’t easily see, I feared that if you really knew me, you might not like me.  (Notice here that my selfish thinking leads me to believe that you actually think about me all the time!

A good example of this human version of a pig is found in the story of Pedro. 

Pedro was driving down the street in a sweat because he had important meeting and couldn't find a parking place.  Looking up toward heaven, he said,
"Lord, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of my life and give up tequila."
 Miraculously, a parking place appeared. 


Pedro looked up again and said, "Never mind.  I found one."

Are you starting to get the picture here?  I’m not saying that being a pig is destined our lives to be slaughtered one day and soon forgotten about except when we pass the lips of someone.  I just think that if we know what the symptoms are, we can learn to cope with the diagnosis and work on improving our lives.  Notice again, I assume people think about the pig when they are eating it, the same way I think you must think of me all the time!  That reminds me of the old joke about the difference between the eggs and the bacon at breakfast.  The punch line goes something like “the chicken donated for the egg, but the pig sacrificed for the bacon.”

Maybe my pig behavior began to show up when I was elementary school.  I’ll never forget the day that I first read the United States Declaration of Independence.  There were the words I needed to justify any past and future behavior:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Obviously, the framers of the Declaration of Independence, all “pigs” placed the wording in the document.  I have the right to pursue happiness!

Years later, I found additional evidence for my behavior.  Clearly written in the first chapter of the first book of The King James Version of the Bible, Genesis 1:26 reads:

“….and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

How cool is that?  Now I even had God on my side when trying to justify my selfish, self-centered behavior!  He gave me “dominion”.  The dictionary lists some synonyms for “dominion”: authorization, jurisdiction, lordship, management, mastery, power, privilege, reign, rule, seniority, command and control. 

Can you imagine the behavior created by my line of reasoning?  I quickly think back about the day, about seven years ago, between the birth of my second and third children.  I was married at the time, and my wife, about 6 months pregnant, called me at the office to ask me if I could come home a little early.  She said she wanted me to watch the kids so she could make a run through the grocery store before preparing dinner.  I responded, “Where’s the babysitter?!”  There was dead silence on the phone.  I knew there was trouble in my kingdom and I had just added to it.  I told her that I would be home shortly. 

After a thorough examination of my life, I can see where my pig behavior led me to all kinds of problems, but the only solution I had that seemed to bring me any relief was to “eat slop and waddle in the mud.” 

I didn’t like to drink alcohol because I hated the feeling brought on by it.  I was too tired to work out at the gym because I had usually arrived at the office a few hours early, leaving the house just as the kids were waking up.  I would stay a few hours late at work, usually timing my arrival at home to eat dinner.  Then I would play with the kids until there bedtime while mom tried to clean the house and clean up after supper and a hectic day.  We would crawl in to bed around 9:00pm, and my wife would fall sound asleep because she had been exhausted from the day.  I would lay there wide-awake, my mind thinking of the next day, fretting over what didn’t go right that day, and dismissing what had gone right.  That kind of “pig” thinking had brought me to some few and dangerous solutions.  It manifested itself in me by the massive consumption of sleeping pills.  What had started out a few years earlier as an occasional sleeping pill had turned in to a 24 hour-a-day obsession, but I will tell you more of that later in the book.

Chapter 3

Women must be “Idiots.”

Remember When

Alan Jackson

Remember when I was young and so were you

And time stood still and love was all we knew

You were the first, so was I

We made love and then you cried

Remember when

Remember when we vowed the vows and walked the walk

Gave our hearts, made the start, it was hard

We lived and learned, life threw curves

There was joy, there was hurt

Remember when

Remember when old ones died and new were born

And life was changed, disassembled, rearranged

We came together, fell apart

And broke each other's hearts

Remember when

Remember when the sound of little feet was the music

We danced to week to week

Brought back the love, we found trust

Vowed we'd never give up

Remember when

Remember when thirty something seemed old

Now lookin' back, it's just a steppin' stone

To where we are, where we've been

Said we'd do it all again

Remember when

Remember when we said when we turned gray

When the children grow up and move away

We won't be sad, we'll be glad

For all the life we've had

And we'll remember when

Remember when

Remember when

~

Before you start trying to read through my justification of the label this book grants you, I should go ahead and state that I don’t think all men are “pigs” and I have met a few women who are definitely not “idiots”.  Helen Keller once said, “ Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”  Even to this pig, that makes sense. 

I can see the benefits of working through some pain, or at least medicating it with some other absurd behavior.  But “idiots” will bathe in the despair and drama.  They also seem to expect a happy ending to all the emotion.  I remember sitting in the movie “Jerry Maguire, starring Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger.  Tom Cruise is Jerry Maguire. He's popular, he's a sports agent, and he's at the top of his game. He's unstoppable, driven by his conscience he writes a 'mission statement' of a new belief that is quality not quantity, the people not the money that really counts. Fired as soon as his boss reads the statement Jerry is soon stripped of his friends, fiancée and self-respect, and is forced to start from scratch. The only two people who stand by him are his sole remaining client, Rod Tidwell, a second-rate football player (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger), a single mother inspired by his statement and zest for life.  At one point in the movie, Zellwegger’s character, Dorothy, says to her sister in an angry attempt to justify her situation and actions declares, “I have this great guy. And he loves my son and he sure does like me a lot.”  At that point in the movie, every idiot in the theater let out a little sigh, and you could even hear a few sobs.  I was dumbfounded at the idiot’s reaction to such a comment.  A little later in the movie, the star pig of the movie, Jerry Maguire, states, “ I won’t let you get rid of me.” Another round of whines and a few tears from the idiots in the theater.   Then the most codependent line I have ever heard in a movie comes floating out of Maguire’s mouth.  He says to Dorothy, “You complete me.”  I wanted to throw up I was laughing so hard.  But what caught my attention was that every idiot in that place was crying.  They believed that line.

All the way home from the theater I was trying to figure out why such a line would touch women so deeply.  I asked my wife, and she explained to me that women (idiots) have a deep need to be needed.  What makes idiots feel that way?  As a selfish pig I can understand being wanted.  But needed?  Why would you idiots want to be needed?  Don’t you know us pigs really want some one healthier than us?  We just would never admit it!  If some idiot said to me “You complete me”, my next question would be, “What were you before I met you?  Incomplete?”

Maybe my pig skin has gotten to thick, but this pig already accepts the fact that most pigs are already about 50% less mature than you idiots!  A sick pig and a sick idiot do not make for a well relationship.

Bonnie Raitt, in the song “I Can’t Make You Love Me”, hit it on the head when she sings:

Turn down the lights, turn down the bed,

Turn down these voices inside my head,

Lay down with me, tell me no lies,

Just hold me close, don't patronize me

Cause I can't make you love me if you don't

You can't make your heart feel something it won't

Here in the dark, in these final hours

I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power

But you won't, no you won't

'Cause I can't make you love me, if you don't

I'll close my eyes, then I won't see

The love you don't feel when you're holding me

Morning will come and I'll do what's right

Just give me till then to give up this fight

And I will give up this fight