ALSO BY RED GREEN
How to Do Everything
The Green Red Green
Copyright © 2013 Steve Smith
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Smith, Steve, 1945-, author
Red Green’s beginner’s guide to women / Red Green.
eISBN: 978-0-385-67764-6
1. Man-woman relationships—Humor. 2. Dating (Social customs)—Humor. I. Title.
PS8587.M589R43 2013 C818′.5402 C2013-902636-3
C2013-903033-6
Cover design by Leah Springate
Cover image: Max Smith
Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited
www.randomhouse.ca
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Acknowledgements
THE ETERNAL QUESTION
MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM MEN
PUBERTY (IT’S NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE)
WHAT WOMEN WANT
LOVE AT FIRST SITE?
GETTING HER ATTENTION
GROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
A LITTLE GENTILITY
CHEST FEVER
SEXIST TEST
SURPRISE SURPRISE
BREAKING THE ICE
THE PHOTO GALLERY
THE PARTY POLICY
PRIMARY ASSESSMENT
THE FIRST DATE
RAMPING UP
YOU AND ETHYL
GOOD CRAZY, BAD CRAZY, CRAZY CRAZY
HER FACE COMES TO YOUR PLACE
LIKE FATHER, LIKE HELL
MEETING HER FATHER
BATTING ORDER FOR RELATIVES
THE CARE PACKAGE
MARRYING A MODEL
FREE LOVE?
OPPOSITES SUBTRACT
BREAKING UP WITHOUT BREAKING DOWN
THE 18,000-NIGHT STAND
COUPLING
TRYING TO MAKE WORK RELATIONSHIPS WORK
WIFE WANTED
ANOTHER WORLD
BUYER’S REMORSE
IS IT LOVE OR JUST GAS?
LOOK FOR THE SIGNS
WHY MEN WON’T COMMIT
THE PROPOSAL
NO MEANS NO
PREPARATION FOR HAPPINESS (PREPARATION H)
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
GOING FERAL
THE IMPORTANCE OF OLD FRIENDS
SIGNING UP
THE LAUNCH SEQUENCE
REGRETS ONLY
THE HONEYMOON’S OVER
HOWDY, NEIGHBOUR
STOP DOING THAT
THE WIN-WIN OF A MAN CAVE
A BRAVE NEW WORLD
THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE
ONE BED TOO MANY
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
HOW TO GET TENURE
I’VE GOT A SECRET
SOCIAL TRAPS
THE DISENCHANTED FOREST
LAUNDRY THE MANLY WAY
PRIORITY QUIZ
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE PORNO
THE COST OF FREE SPEECH
THE GREATER GOOD
THE HOW AND THE WHY
THE SECRET PANEL
THE ANSWER IS BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND
AND BABY MAKES THREE
LABOUR DISPUTES
A SMALL ADJUSTMENT
LETTER FROM BUSTER
DO AS I SAY
GO IN PEACE
SPARE THE ROD, SPARE THE DAD
TROUBLE AT SCHOOL
THE FIRST FIGHT
YOU DA MAN
LEVELS OF SURVEILLANCE
WHY IT TAKES HER SO LONG TO GET READY
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT WHILE WAITING FOR YOUR WIFE
WOMANSPEAK
THE SHOPPER STOPPER
FINAL ANSWER?
HOV
YOU AND THEM
FIVE REASONS YOUR WIFE IS NOT TALKING TO YOU
HOW GOOD IS GOOD ENOUGH?
NEVER BE EFFORTLESS
GENDER TREND
MORE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT WHILE STILL WAITING FOR YOUR WIFE
THE BAG OF TRICKS
THE SILENT TRUCE
THE GREAT DIVIDE
THERE’S SOMETHING FUNNY GOING ON
BEING CONSISTENTLY INCONSISTENT
ALL IN THE GAME
YOU’RE AN IDIOT
MAKING YOUR MOVE
FORGIVE AND FORGET? FORGET IT
BLUE BOOK VALUE
A BETTER MAN
THE KINETIC CONNECTION
THE MAGIC OF GPS
MASTERING THE EVASIVE ANSWER
FIND YOUR CRUISING SPEED
PROTECTING THE EMPTY NEST
MUCH ADO ABOUT TO DO
THE REALITY GAME
ACCOUNTING ERRORS
ONE THING AT A TIME
WE ARE NOT WORTHY
THE QUICKEST WAY
HANDSOME HANDY
CARING IS THE HARDEST PART
A CLOSED SYSTEM
EQUAL BUT NOT INTERCHANGEABLE
TO KNOW HER IS TO LOVE HER
LEAVE ME ALONE
YOU TELL ME
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
SEE YOU IN COURT
YOU NEED A REFEREE
THE FUTURE OF EVOLUTION
MOVIN’ ON
MYSTERY SOLVED
LAST WORDS OF MEN
BUSTER’S FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
BUSTER’S LAST STAND
THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING
CONFLICT RESOLUTION FORM 1063742093335209854-B
INTRODUCTION
Let me start by congratulating you on having the courage and maturity to pick up this book. Whether you bought it for yourself or received it as a gift or borrowed it from a former friend or are just reading it in a dark corner of a bookstore hoping you won’t be noticed, it shows that you want to be a better person, which is commendable and possibly essential.
But in the tradition of any of my earlier works, be careful not to raise your expectations too high. In many ways, difficult human relationships are like diarrhea—it’s important for you to be the first one to realize you have a problem. And while this book may not provide a complete cure, it will at least get you running towards the men’s room.
So buying the book is a valuable first step, and the less you paid, the more valuable it is. Even if you stole the book, you may have morality issues, but you will probably be the most sensitive person in your cellblock.
As for the content of the book itself, its purpose is not necessarily to draw conclusions, but more to give observations and anecdotal evidence that will show the results that come from the various approaches to the most difficult and yet fundamental of all human relationships—that of a man and a woman.
And let me make it clear to any of my wife’s friends who may be reading this book that the examples I give here do not in any way represent my own personal marital experiences. Instead, a wide array of friends and acquaintances have generously shared their mistakes so you can avoid them. These people are from all walks of life and many different geographical locations and are even fictitious w
hen necessary. So what you’re looking at here is a research book—a collection of experiences and theories that will hopefully help you to understand and cohabitate with your significant other—the most important person in your world—even when she’s not in the room.
Red Green
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank a small collection of Lodge Members who were kind enough to contribute their experiences and opinions and without whose input this book would have been no bigger than a time-share pamphlet. Some might say I have known these men all my life but I say “not yet.” And to extend that life as long as possible, I have decided to keep their identities a secret. I will refer to them simply as Buster H., Stinky P., Junior S. and Moose T., as a favour to the Hadfield, Peterson, Singleton and Thompson families respectively.
THE ETERNAL QUESTION
Before we get too far into this thing I think we need to deal with the question of why is it important for us men to understand women. Is it really all that essential, or is it just a cheesy excuse for me to write another book and get a big, fat advance? No, it’s not. And it wouldn’t have been, even if I did get a big, fat advance.
You are programmed to cohabitate, and unless you’re a masochist, you’d like that to be a pleasant lifelong experience. You as a man need to curry favour with at least one woman, and to do that, you have to be able to anticipate her every need and want. And to do that, you need to understand her.
So as you go through this frustrating quest to once and for all understand that woman in your life, let’s not for one moment forget that if you ever get it right, she will be the greatest thing that ever happened to you. And conversely, if you continue to get it wrong, she will make your life a living hell.
It’s a long, arduous route with many pitfalls, but you must always keep your eyes on the prize. And never give up.
MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM MEN
You may remember learning in your Grade 9 biology class that when a man and a woman create a baby, the sex of that baby is determined by the chromosomes of the male sperm, not from those of the female egg. To me that means that the woman was prepared to make either a boy or a girl, depending on what was shipped to her receiving dock.
It’s really the first example of a woman’s predisposition to make the best of whatever falls into her lap.
That means that, although the two parents share equally in the responsibility for the child’s general appearance and personality, the gender of the child comes totally from Dad. So every fertile man in the world has the capability of fathering a female baby, which means that every man in the world should be capable of understanding women, on the basis of local knowledge.
It’s probably the origin of the respected phrase “takes one to know one.” We have no excuses. It’s our first setback.
PUBERTY (IT’S NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE)
I’m not even going to bother with the ages from birth to puberty. Girls are easy to understand during that phase. They’re basically boys that you don’t ever hit or swear at. Puberty is the game changer. All of a sudden, thirteen years into what has been a pretty good gig, you’re suddenly exchanging your high voice for body hair and becoming a deodorant customer and growing like the national debt. Some things that have been hanging around for years suddenly start working. And I’m not talking about your Uncle Bob.
And no matter how tall you are, there seems to be almost no distance between your brain and your genitals. Nor is it always clear who’s in charge of who.
This is the beginning of the challenge to be a man. You’re having racy thoughts and wild fantasies, and the girls you played hide and seek with last week have no interest in playing hide the cannoli this week. This is where the two genders take different forks in the road. Boys get muscles. Girls get hormones.
And so it begins.
WHAT WOMEN WANT
There is probably no greater mystery facing man since the beginning of time than for him to try to figure out what women want. It’s a source of great frustration for men because to them it all seems so simple. They’re motivated to give women what they want; they’re even prepared to sacrifice if necessary. Many times a man will cry out in the night, “Just tell me what you want,” although he’s usually alone in the garage at the time.
To find out why this has always been a conundrum, you have to look at the issue from a whole bunch of different sides.
Let’s start with the man’s perspective. He has a real problem with anybody who can’t tell him what they want. If he doesn’t know what they want, how can he ever provide it? And if they don’t know what they want, how are they ever going to know when they’ve got it? Heck, they may already have it.
A man is thinking, “How hard can that be?” He knows what he wants—fried food, sex, a half-decent house and cool toys. What’s the problem? Well, the problem is that men who have those things always want other things, eventually. It’s not that they don’t want those things at all. It’s just that once they get them, the novelty wears off and they move on to something else.
But they continue to know what they want. Men don’t see that acquiring bigger boats and more expensive toys and larger portions of fried food is just a repetition of the need to satisfy short-term demands. Every man I know will come up with an instant list of items when you ask him what he wants. But they’re all “right now” things. Like winning the lottery or spending a fact-finding half-hour with that blonde at the end of the bar. When you ask them what they want over the long term, for the rest of their lives, the room gets pretty quiet. That’s because they don’t know what they want, either.
If you ask a woman what she wants “right now,” she’ll have a lot of quick answers that, with any luck, may include you. But when you just ask her what she wants, she assumes you mean long term, and even if she knows, she doesn’t want to answer. Because one of the main things she wants is to not to have to tell you what she wants.
You may be uncomfortable not knowing what she wants, but that’s not her problem. Maybe you’re uncomfortable with it because you don’t really know what you want, either, and it kills you to be reminded of that. But don’t panic, and don’t worry. You don’t need to know what your woman wants. You just need to continue to care what your woman wants, even if you never find out what it is. The caring will be good enough for her.
Likewise, don’t be upset that you don’t know what you want. Your woman knows what you want and if you play your cards right, she’ll make sure you get it. You may not know what it is, but I’m betting you’ll recognize it when you see it.
LOVE AT FIRST SITE?
The young people today seem to do everything on the Internet. You ask them what the weather’s like right now and they’d rather Google it on their iPhone than look out the window. And when was the last time anybody looked anything up in an encyclopedia? You can look things up on the Internet even if you don’t know the alphabet. Every piece of information, every product, every idea, every theory and everybody is now at your fingertips. Or, more specifically, your thumbtips.
So I guess it’s only natural that people would use the Internet to find a partner. You can find your past on the ancestry sites, so maybe you can find your future on the dating sites. And in many ways it’s much safer than actual dating. You can stay anonymous as long as you want. You can be thousands of miles away from the other person. And if you do find someone interesting, you can do a background check while you’re reading their email.
But I just want you to be careful about what you’re doing. You could be playing with virtual fire. I think some of the appeal of Internet dating is that people think it’s another innovation in the recent string of computer technological breakthroughs. And sometimes when something is new, people will be drawn to it for its newness rather than its value.
Maybe the technology of being able to send instant messages and videos to people all over the world is new, but the concept of getting romantically involved with someone you’ve never met goes b
ack to biblical times. Back in those days it was called “arranged marriages,” and maybe the principals weren’t involved, but if you let your dad use your laptop, history may repeat itself.
In more recent centuries we’ve had mail-order brides, where some lonely guy who’d been rejected by everyone in his own country would write a letter to a woman in the Far East who was looking to relocate to the Far West, and if she was agreeable, he would FedEx her to the nearest port of entry. Sure it took longer because of the letters going back and forth, but that gave each of them more time to reconsider.
But think about this: you’re each on a path that will lead you to a person who has been passed over by every person they, and their mother, have ever met. The Internet is quicker, but that doesn’t mean it’s better. And even with all the information available, you still know less about the person than you don’t know about the person.
You may think they have language skills from their emails, but they could be using spell check and auto-grammar. They may send a picture so you know what they look like, but even I can go through a thousand pictures of myself and find one that looks okay. Even though it doesn’t look like me. Which is why it looks okay. Even a short video of them can be deceiving. You give him a couple of thousand takes and even Sly Stallone comes off as an actor.
What you get on the Internet is a very produced, edited, air-brushed, polished version of the person. You’re not seeing the real thing. You’re not going to know if she has hairy hands or eats with her mouth open. Don’t get fooled by the brochure. You want to do a little test drive before you sign on the dotted line.
I’m not saying the Internet is a bad way to meet women. I’m just saying you should lower your expectations or you’re going to be disappointed. A friend of mine who tried it said he heard back from hundreds of women and his conclusion was “the odds are good but the goods are odd.”
GETTING HER ATTENTION
With any luck, you will know early on if you are heterosexual. Once that’s established, you will want to begin your quest to find a lifemate or, failing that, a weekend shack-up. In either case, no woman of the opposite sex is going to be attracted to you until she at least notices you. You have to get her attention. And that can be a tough challenge.