You ever just panic? Like really freak the shit out? It could be over the simplest of things actually. Car keys gone? Implode. Can’t remember Captain Kangroo’s real name? Break shit. (BTW: It’s Bob Keeshan)

Well, this wasn’t exactly the same, but it was nearly a massive freakout in the most major way.

I woke up this morning and everything seemed fine. Said goodbye to the sugar mama a little before 8 a.m., checked my overnight email and tweets from my phone and rolled out of bed about 8:10. I’ll even admit I stopped on the stairs on the way down and played with the cats for a minute, mocking them with the string I left out yesterday.

Once I got downstairs it was the normal routine to start. Give TeamCAC some food and water for the day. Done. Check to see if we have any milk left. Yessir. Grab the cereal and head to the couch to eat before starting the third and final day of planned unpacking from the move.

All seemed good and well until 8:22 a.m. That’s when I about lost it, completely panicked. It was right then that I nearly dropped my shorts to check to see if I had any sack left at all.

What the hell had I become? A housewife? Fuck me. In three short days, I nearly revoked my ManCard on my own.

Rewind and see how this went down….

Woke up and actually played on my phone while petting the cat, which was all kinds of needy since we now shut the door at night (unlike when I lived in one room with the cats for two months and would typically wake up with an impacted cat in my anus; read blog 1 for more details… or don’t).

I went down stairs next and did play on the steps with the little shitheads. And then I fed them. Grabbed my cereal as I said, but I fudged a little as I left out what kind. Special K. Oh shit. Where’s my bra?

And as I’m eating, I grabbed a magazine off the table and started flipping through. It was some Homestyle magazine or some shit. What was I doing? Who had I become? I was looking at articles about recipes to make on a budget and flower beds to liven up your kitchen windows. Holy shit, I’m potentially gay. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because there’s definitely not)

It wasn’t until I flipped to a page in that rag that had a listing of types of beer mugs and steins and what beers go best in them that I suddenly panicked and realized everything in my man life may come crumbling down around me. But it also helped bring me, as Soul II Soul would say, back to reality. And, I overcame.

How, you ask? Seeing the beer steins made me remember ManRule No. 13, that’s how. As stated on the ManCard, “When in a critical situation that jeopardizes your worthiness to shoot big guns, crash pickup trucks and eat every type of food with a jalapeno, do the most basic, obvious man thing: think of boobs.”

So I did. (Insert Homer Simpson “mmmmm” noise here)

Instantly, I was back to my manself as soon as I remembered the pool scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Oh come on guys. You know you all have a fallback set of boobs that you can remember on the spot when needed. And if you don’t have a pair ready and willing right off the top of your head, you’re either lying or gay or both (again, nothing wrong with that).

So Phoebe Cates assured me that I wasn’t losing my ManCard today. And some other things came to light as I thought about the situation more, and it convinced me I wasn’t as close to womanhood as I thought.

First, the cereal. It is Special K, but it’s Special K Chocolatey Delight. Anything, even chick food, is at least partially OK if it has a minimum of one of the four man food groups: chocolate, chips, beer or sausage. ManRule No. 5 says that’s the truth. So I was alright here.

Then later in the day, one of my buddies from back home texted me with a picture. He works for the city and fixes broken water lines and sewers and drives the big city plows in the winter and does other random shit that no one knows what he does. But he also has enough time to send me text picture forwards almost daily. I felt better about keeping my ManCard when I got his text today. It was a dead cat on the side of the road with a big sign that said “Free Cat” with an arrow. Now, I’ve become attached to TeamCAC, but that was still funny-assed shit. Check mark on the leader of the free world side.

After finishing the unpacking–which means I’m officially moved in and tomorrow need to start looking for a job—I considered the earlier events of the day and decided that, as I head out  by myself for the first time in the area, I should make sure no one looks at me as anything other than a man.

Now, I haven’t shaved in 11 days, so I have pretty good facial hair going–and FYI it’s fucking white, not grey. I also haven’t cut my hair in nearly three months since all my shit was in storage after selling the house. To add to the hair (agreed, it’s not as much as it used to be but it’s getting curly in the spots that still grow), I put on my Nebraska trucker cap–thanks official personal sponsor adidas–that made the long sides basically wing out, in almost a nod and remembrance to the mullet days 1990-93. And finally, I wore my “I’m Huge in Japan” t-shirt. The reason I wore this particular shirt? At the bar last fall, a friend mistakenly thought it said “I’m Hung in Japan,” which I definitely took as a compliment.

With that outfit, I hit the grocery store for some pop and meat. I also had to pick up some stuff for the sugar mama, and as I got to the milk section, I carved out another notch in the ManBelt. That came after I had to text my wife to find out what kind of milk skim milk was.

Now, don’t give me that look. There were several kinds of milk in the Publix milk section, but not a damn one included the word skim. None. I even read them all twice. There was fat free and reduced fat and whole and light fat and… whatthefuck? Why can’t they just name one fucking brand of milk skim? That’s only four letters and would probably save them money on printing in the long run. But no. Dicks.

Growing up, we just got the one with the red top. Didn’t matter what kind of milk it was. Just get the one with the red top. Okay, that was actually a sortof lie. We didn’t always have milk in our trailer or one-room house and when we did, sometimes it was powdered milk from the (free for the poor) food pantry. But when we did buy non-powdered milk, it was the kind with the red top. It didn’t have some fruity name that wasn’t even a real name. Like skim.

So anyway, all these things bring me back to knowing my place in the world  as a guy and my life is safe and normal for today, at least as normal as my life goes. And I definitely feel better about my ManCard still being active. But now I should go. I have to make dinner.