Because we can, Damnit!

Because we can, damnit!

It’s funny what a man will do just because he can. I was reminded of this very peculiar phenomenon recently while viewing a documentary on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Walter Cronkite was spouting off some nonsense about how important it was that we sent man to the moon to “explore” it. Come on, really? It wasn’t important that we “explore” the moon! We all knew, deep inside, that it was just a big rock didn’t we? I mean, nobody was still believing it was made out of cheese by then were they? Were people standing at the ordering table at McDonalds asking for a hamburger with melted “moon” before we spent billions of dollars to correct this fallacy? No, the reason we went to the moon, planted a flag on its surface, bounced around, drove a 30 million-dollar dune buggy, and smacked a golf ball into oblivion was because we could, damnit! Men know the satisfaction of accomplishing such things, let the women scrutinize, as they will. Edmund Hillary, the first man to scale Mount Everest, braved icy terrain, 70 degree ledges from 20,000 feet up, nagging frostbite, and a constant deprivation of oxygen just to climb a mountain that “was there”. His wife, behind a never-ending barrage of questions like “you’re doing what now?” and “are you absolutely insane?” I’m sure was rolling her eyes when he first proposed the climb. But he did it, and once every man grows old, the hearing deteriorates, and the nagging of the wife slowly fades into an incoherent whisper, all that remains is the pride of accomplishing something just because he could. I vividly remember one December the wife and I were struggling with money problems. Our first daughter had just been born and we were barely getting by with a roof over heads and a little milk and eggs in the fridge while I was trying to finish my schooling. Looking at our meager finances, it quickly became evident that we were not going to be able to give out lavish gifts for loved ones that Christmas. Instead we decided to send out a Christmas Card chronicling the first few months of our daughters life. Jen, sensibly, wanted to send it out in the form of a nice colored 8x11 sheet of paper, perhaps with a little bow glued to one of the corners. I envisioned something more miraculous, perhaps a DVD that we could send out full of pictures, video, music, star-sweeps, and a voice over done by Morgan Freeman. OK, the Morgan Freeman part was a little over the top I quickly decided, but never the less it was gonna be awesome! All I had to do was get the video editing software, a few blank discs, and find a cheap DVD burner for our computer. Jen wondered why, all of a sudden, we would be spending $150 on stuff when the whole idea was to save money. Us guys know the reason! It was while I was in Best Buy that I saw a DVD recorder for $100 that I could hook up to my TV. The thought came to me then, as it must have for Edmund Hillary when he first spotted that 25,000 foot piece of rock that is Mount Everest, “why not try?” Why should I be content with a DVD burner that would only work on my computer if I could get one to record TV shows and burn stuff off the computer? Yes, it would be more money, but this was something I had to do. I just had to figure out how. I bought the DVD burner and noticed it had an S-video input. So I went and bought a video card for the computer with an S-video output. But that would only transmit the video, I needed something for sound. I ran to Radioshack and bought myself a chord that would take a stereo jack and split it to two RCA jacks. But then I remembered that my TV flashes from darker to lighter whenever my DVD player is plugged into the coaxial connection so I bought myself an RF modulator as well. On the ride home, $300 into it, I slapped myself on the forehead for forgetting the video editing software and headed back to Best Buy. Yes, they had something cheap, but it didn’t have all the fancy transitions and stuff. And fart noises! It had like 30 of them! You can’t have a documentary on your kids without fart noises right? I slapped down another $80 and left the store. Once I got home, installed the soundcard and the software, connected the DVD burner to the TV, plugged in the RF modulator and such, I noticed my S-video cable was slightly too short to reach from my TV to my computer. I jumped back into the car and headed for Radioshack again to buy another cable and a coupler. In all, I had spent close to $500. Despite it being in the low teens outside, I spent the night shivering in the back seat of the car. I didn’t even get to try the stuff out! Jen had been to mad to even let me sleep on the couch. She just couldn’t see the beauty of what I had done, much like Hilary’s wife. I sat up, shivering, since I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in such cold, cramped quarters when I saw a car drive by with Christmas lights on its grill. It was Danny Wettstein. He spotted me, waved me over to the car window, and gave me a sip of the hot chocolate he had in his thermos. As I explained my predicament, he didn’t say a thing. He didn’t need to, really. I knew he understood. Afterall, here was a man who had put Christmas lights on his grill, not because they helped him drive from point A to point B, or because the alternator somehow functioned better with a flashing array of red, blue, and green lights. Not because it would cost a lot of money and hours in the barn, away from the family during the holiday season. No, it was because he could. As I took one last sip of that hot chocolate and handed the cup over to Danny, I quickly mused “Hey Danny, that hot chocolate was a bit on the cold side. Wouldn’t it be great if somebody made a way to hook up an expresso machine in their car he could fill will hot chocolate? “Yes it would”, said Danny, his eyes getting a certain gleam in them, “yes it would”. As he drove off into the night with the flashing colored lights leading the way, I once again climbed into the cold backseat of the car. Though temperatures were way below freezing, I remained warm in that sense of pride.

Because we can, damnit!