So the winter is coming back, and I was in a place that was quite cold, although I was adequately dressed if I had been doing any kind of exercise and generating any heat, but I was out of the elements.
And I am reminded of the other times in my life, where I was grateful to get out of the elements and into some kind of shelter, where the back of a broken down van is shelter, because it is out of the wind, out of the rain, and the wooden floor is better to lie on than wet mud and earth.
This seems to be a peculiarly male thing, to be able to look back and shrug and think “I’ve been through worse” and just carry on…. I learned at lot of lessons back then, sure, you may lose a huge proportion of body heat through your exposed head, but lying down on the ground in winter without some insulation between you and the ground was the better way to fuck yourself up in the core temperature stakes, and if things are that bad/cold just keep moving, sleep during the daytime when it is warmer.
Things change and times change but in the british army it was known colloquially as “stag” for some time, as in “stagnant” as in “stagnant water“… you just sat in one place unmoving, this is where you sit and where you stay and you monitor this.
It’s not a purely military concept of course, the night watchman, the furnace attendant, there are plenty of roles that involve being in one place and staying there to do a specific task until relieved.
Fact is, as soon as it shifts from “boring” to “uncomfortable” to “fucking miserable” you do find it is all the wimminz who crap out first and quit… of course this is no surprise because this is exactly what they do on the relationship front, crap out first and quit…
But… I think somewhere in their programming that little “I’ve been through worse” line of code was left out, which is more far reaching and profound than you may think, because suddenly if there is no comparison of relative bad-ness to previous events, then there is no point having any comparison to previous events, wimminz lives then become like Italian driving, if it is the rear view mirror it simply ceases to exist, it is history, gone and forgotten.
For sure, that same line of programming comes into play when I do something after getting out from the cold, and again upon reflection this is a purely male thing, and that is standing in front of a fire with your bare ass towards the fire, being deliciously toasted, I have seen a couple of wimminz try and ape it and fail miserably, never seen a wimminz actually do it, especially not alone.
Wimminz will crowd the fire, but they will toast their front, somewhere in the halls of DNA evolution something got hard wired into men to put their ass to the fire, night vision outwards, threat perception outwards, the reward for getting through another low water mark in the “I’ve been through worse” annals.
While there is a certain element of gallows humour to “I have put up with worse“, especially where a small group of men is concerned, all up to your balls in cold mud, some asshole will always comment that it could be worse, because it could be raining too…. there is also a certain element of “this too will come to pass” and once again you can warm your ass by the fire, as well as an element of “cheer up, you’re still much better off than you were when xxxx etc”
Now to give a concrete example from the UK I quite like buying butane gas in the 15 kg bottles, these currently run around £32 (autumn 2012) per bottle, and there are several reasons I like them compared to turning on the central heating.
- It’s a real flame that you can warm your ass in front of.
- It is basically instant heat, unlike central heating.
- It is basically one room heat, unlike central heating.
- You are paying for it in advance, unlike central heating.
- In extremis, unlike the central heating, it works when the electric is out.
If I run out of gas I can just turn the central heating on, and the cost of keeping the whole bachelor pad warm with central heating vs one room warm with bottle gas isn’t actually much different, mains gas is cheaper than bottled, but items #1 and #4 in the list above are the killers….
There was a crazy old fart around here that actually wasn’t that crazy, he didn’t have or use any heating at all, instead he wove 70 watts worth of resistive heating wire into his clothes.. nights like last night where the mercury is hovering around the freezing and I have no female flesh to warm my bed I turn on the electric underblanket… toasty.. may not wake me up with a blowjob and a coffee but it doesn’t fart or fidget.
Chances are, if you are a man you read the above paragraph and had a small grin, chances are, if you are a wimminz and you read the above paragraph and shook your head slightly, and there it is, “I’ve been through worse”
time for some more blues
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listen to the fucking words… amen
………