Growing up the garage was off limits. At the age of five the outrageous scents patrolling the space gave me nightmares for years. One reoccurring nightmare I had as a child involved a red and white stripped tube slide. I was always scared to see what lie at the bottom. I never knew what would happen or what things i would find. I realize now as an adult that this dream was a metaphor for my father's man cave because I was truly afraid at some of the foreign objects I might find.
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| My Father's office.... |
How do you explain to a sobbing child why there was a scantily clad woman looming over his work station instead of a picture of mommy. To me the posters of Budweiser models with high wasted hot pink thong bikinis and hair that was reaching for the heavens were all ex-girlfriends of my dad taunting him to come back to them. And maybe my father actually believed they were.
Even to this day I shutter at the idea of going through my parents garage. My mom has given up all reasonable hope that my father will decide to empty the contents of the space and turn it into an organized family den with labeled drawers, clean white walls with pictures of flowers instead of women, and a place in the corner for her arts and crafts. However, any time my mother decides to touch the contents of the cave whether it be a pen or a box my fathers face turns from its familiar red to a deep purple with steam coming out of his nostrils. He begins to resemble a bull taunted into fight mode. So now to avoid an uncomfortable situation my mother has refused to cross the line made out of the scent of male juices. Unless laundry needs to be done the door stays closed, and if company is over it gets locked and bolted. Heaven forbid if someone were to witness how big of a monster her husband actually is. Even worse is the idea that someone might associate his mess with her.
One day i decided to get over my fears and go poking around for some boxes I had stored in the garage years ago but was to afraid to look for. I thought it is ridiculous I still felt this way, what could I possibly be afraid of? It turns out I am still that chubby cheeked 5 year old that is scared of the monsters my father told me hid behind the boxes and would eat me if I got too close. I found all sorts of unexplainable items that I did not have the courage to analyze.
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| WTF? |
Over the years my father would walk back into the house with a new item he had just discovered living in his garage. It was like the man cave became a living breathing creature that began birthing foreign objects just to amuse my fathers already perverse mind. When you heard the door squeak open followed by an evil fit of masculine giggles you knew my dad had found yet another totally ridiculous conception from the garage.
Just the other day my dad walked in giggling like a school girl and handed me a card from a stack that he was holding. I looked at it with a puzzled expression because written on the card was an series of letters that did not form any intelligible word. The card read "poohaw". When I proceeded to flip the card over it explained that a poohaw was a place someone went to go play billiards....My dad proceeded to laugh manically and through the moments of utter glee remarked "THEIR OOKIE CARDS! GET IT! I just found them in the garage! Aren't they GREAT!"
Now it is not a surprise that my father would own a pair of ookie flash cards, but where or better yet who would make something so absolutely pointless? It only validates my theory that the garage coughed this ridiculous item up from its loins just to amuse my father's twisted sense of humor. Has the garage evolved to become some sort of creator of perverse thought? And how many man cave's out there have such a expansive inventory of ludicrous and nonsensical goods? I would be naive to think that my father's garage is the only one of its kind.
In a way, the man cave has become a right of passage, a link between father and son, the Fillet Mignon of the masculine world. One only has to witness the recesses of my grandfathers garage to understand the finite reasons behind why my father's own manly space is such a cluster fuck.
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| Bambi |
My father's own space has become a Rhodes Legacy, one in which he will certainly not forget to pass onto his own sons. If he could some how pass on the whole garage including all of its questionable contents to his future successors he would.
His own place of masculine worship has become symbolic of the viking funeral. Where as the vikings were buried with all of their loot to help them ascend into their new life, my father (if my mother would allow it) would be buried in the garage surrounded by his own creations. Symbols of a twisted life well lived. I can only imagine that in his will he states that his eulogy be said just inside the content's of his masculine space so all can witness who he actually was. For this very reason my mother hopes to supersede my father in this life so this last remaining wish be denied to him. She'd rather die knowing that no one outside her own children truly knows how much of a slob my dad really is.
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| My mother would murder me in cold blood if she knew that I have unleashed her worst nightmare on the internet.... |
And so I await in fear and curiosity for the next unbelievably ridiculous item my father will pull from the depths of his 50 year old creation, the man cave. Heaven forbid if I inherit even a sliver of the Rhodes Legacy. Boys- it is all yours!
