Today, I entered the pantheon of manhood.

Growing up as an American male I was exposed to many self-sufficient role models. Bob Vila could fix up that old house and make it look easy. Emerson and Thoreau touted the tenets of self-reliance in Self Reliance and Walden, respectively. Indiana Jones was book smart and he knew his way around horses, guns, tanks, whips, planes, rafts falling from the sky, and gongs that roll. My father seemingly can fix anything. We even have an American male icon that is so self-reliant and stubborn that he fails for our amusement: Tim “The Toolman” Taylor. Today, I entered the pantheon of manhood. I was self-reliant.

Glad to be a part of the club.

I’m moving next week. As many of you know, one crummy part of moving is collecting boxes from where ever you can so you don’t have to buy them from a moving company. I have been slowly taking boxes from my job and bringing them home via the El train. As you can imagine, this is difficult and has forced people to give me dirty looks on the El and I’m sure someone has at least put a minor curse on me because I took up too much space with my boxes.

I decided that this morning I would drive to work and pay heavy parking fees to load up my truck with boxes in one big load and I wouldn’t burden my work anymore with the back log of boxes and I wouldn’t be a burden to the folks that ride the El every day.

I arrived at 4:30am to intercept the boxes of the morning and, as you can imagine, I was tired. I parked in the loading zone of my building and I LOCKED MY FUCKING KEYS IN MY CAR!

I felt like such a fool. A helpless fool. I called 311 to see if the police could help me, but they told me to call a locksmith. Now the fact that I’m cheap enough to not buy boxes suggests that I didn’t want to pay overtime fees to a locksmith because I’m an idiot.

These guys would've made their own car, lock, and door. Then they would have created their own new hanger-like device to break into their car they invented. That's how self-reliant those fuckers were!

So I remembered what my father and grandfather had told me what to do if I get locked out of my car: get a wire coat hanger! I found a wire hanger and went to work. After 5-10 minutes of struggling I entered the pantheon of manhood somewhere between my father and Bob Vila.

Today I can say to you all that for a few short moments before 5am this morning, I was a self-sufficient American man.