Menopause - 101

Let me say this about that.

I, not unlike every other guy on the planet, could not define “menopause”  if you held a gun to my head.  We know it exists, we know that it’s bad, we know it can turn a perfectly normal female into a ‘Babbling Beelzebub Banshee Bitch’  for no apparent reason – we just don’t understand what it is, exactly.  It’s kinda like gravity – we know it’s there, but we’re at a loss to explain what causes it.

Men don’t experience menopause, so we have no frame of reference.    (Any guy that tells you he’s going through “male menopause” is simply trying to attach a sympathy-inducing term to the fact that he’s getting old and is pissed-off that his life didn’t turn out better than it did.)    It’s really not our fault.  From childhood men have had to rely on women to explain menopause to us.  Regrettably, women are apt to describe menopause, like everything else, in terms of …    “their feelings”, rather than a nuts-and-bolts explanation a guy could understand. For example, a guy wants an explanation something like this:

A “guy” explanation of menopause:  “An irregular deflabulation of the moler canal which initiates a foobular excretion onto snockuler membrane.  This in turn, causes a ventrical contraction of the left boogerteen vessel, thus causing the bitch to go nuts.”

If you have ever heard a guy try to explain menopause to someone, you know how pathetic – and entertaining – it can be.  Take for example:

My friend Carl and I were sitting in his back yard, trying to drink the bottom out of his beer cooler while he explained to me why Nancy Pelosi is such a horse’s-ass.  His son and grandkids were visiting for a few days and somewhere between six-pack number 2 and 3, his twenty-something son and 10 year old grandson joined us.

I suppose the Nancy Pelosi conversation was boring the kid, so from nowhere, he interupted the conversation with the following question:

Kid:  “Dad, what’s menopause?”

Dad:  “Hoo-boy.”

Carl and I gave each other a knowing glance like we had just found two Super Bowl tickets lying by the side of the road.  This was going to be great fun and it wasn’t costing us a cent.

Dad:  “Well son, that’s complicated.  It comes at the end of a long string of other things that you might not know about.  It’s kinda like you’re taking a final exam in biology without ever taking the course. Do you know anything about the ‘Birds and the Bees’ ?”

Kid:  “Sure.  Birds make nests and bees make honey.”

Dad:  “Hoo-boy.  No son, I mean like where babies come from.”

Kid:  “Does this have something to do with a ‘Venis’ ?”

Dad:  “Venis?  What’s a Venis ?”

Kid:  “I’m not sure.  I saw it written on the back of the bathroom door at school.  It said, ‘What do you get when you cross a penis with a vagina?”

Dad:  ” Let me guess – a Venis?”

Old Carl gave his son a shrug as if to say,  ‘Ya got a better explanation, go for it’.  While his son mulled his options, Carl and I both grabbed another longneck from the cooler to await the next act of this unfolding human comedy.

Dad:  “OK, let’s go with Venis, for now.  You see son, when you reach manhood, and have finished college and have a good job, sometime in your early thirties, you may meet a woman and fall in love.  A few years later you may want to start your own family so you and your wife might make a Venis, and after a little while, a blessed event happens.”

Kid:  “Oh, I get it.  It’s like when I eat too many chili burritos.”

Carl almost choked on his beer and was trying so hard not to laugh that he set the senior citizen record for snot bubbles.  My mind was racing to fathom just how we got from ‘menopause’ to ‘chili burritos’  in a span of a minute and a half.  Carl’s son was glaring at him for taking such enjoyment from his predicament and it looked like it might get ugly.

Dad:  “Son, go in the house and watch TV.  I need to have a word with your Grandfather.”

Shambo:  “Well Carl, ‘ol buddy.  I’d like to stick around and watch your son kick your ass, but I’ve just had a great idea for a blog.  Best of luck and give me a call when you get out of the hospital.”

And, that’s all I have to say about that.

Shambo