American popular culture isn’t exactly brimming with examples of men behaving well. Or at least, men behaving as honorably and sensibly as possible (I almost wrote, under the circumstances here, but I agree with George Bernard Shaw, there are no “circumstances,” we simply create situations, then deal with them).
Apparently (I have this second hand from an author pal of mine — I don’t watch The Tonight Show) Jay Leno recently wandered into the audience, looking for women willing to reveal their most embarrassing first date. He zeroed in on a lady who raised her hand and told the following tale.
She’d been invited to go skiing with a guy in the mountains outside Salt Lake City (no, as far as I know this wasn’t Mitt Romney‘s former girlfriend), just a day trip you understand, this was, after all, a first date. They had a good day’s skiing, had a nice time generally, and were driving down off the hill late that afternoon when the woman realized she had to pee. She alerted her companion, who urged her to hang on, as they were driving down a relatively narrow, winding mountain road with enormous amounts of snow on either side — no rest stops or roadside gas stations for miles.
She crossed her legs and held on for as long as she could. Finally, she told him it was either pull over, right now, or he’d have a serious upholstery problem on his hands. He did as she asked, and stood discretely outside the car, looking away from her, ready to warn any oncoming traffic there was a woman at work here, while she dropped her pants and leaned against the back bumper to relieve herself.
Mission thankfully accomplished, she began to pull up her pants. As she did so she started to stand, and quickly noted to her complete horror that her butt was stuck to the bumper. It had frozen to the metal like a Minnesota schoolboy’s tongue to a playground flagpole in January.
Mortified, she told her date what had happened, starting to laugh halfway through the description of her dilemma. They agreed that, while absurd, this could easily morph into a serious situation — clearly they had to free her, asap. To do that without leaving behind large patches of her skin attached to the arctic Detroit iron, they would need something warm. So ( I’m skipping some stuff here in the interests of brevity), she covered herself as best she could and shut her eyes, while her rescuer proceeded to… wait for it: pee on her butt and the bumper.
This worked like a hot knife through butter.
You may want to file this anecdote away for future reference; you really do never know.
Now this, it seems to me, was a truly manly thing for this guy to have done. Lesser men might have shied away from such a delicate task. Less manly men might have tried using, I don’t know, some engine oil, or spit or something. But this guy knew that instant action was required, and proceeded to do that which needed to be done, with style and grace (and, apparently, remarkable accuracy).
By the way, the woman married him. I mean, what else could she do?