A Room of One's Own

While visiting us last week, my dad procured a set of over-sized, highly antiquated speakers from the side of the road with a sign bearing the four most inviting letters in the English language: "F-R-E -E". Somehow he managed to lift the behemoths into his car without herniating himself or ripping out the car's transmission, because, thoughtfully, he wanted to install them in Mr. Wonderful's shop during his absence.

Where my dad saw good fortune and great sound quality, I feared the battle of marriages everywhere..."Don't Mess With The Man Space."

"You have the whole house. The garage is my space. I don't toss cardboard boxes ready to be recycled into your living room", Mr. Wonderful has said to me without any touch of irony. Fiercely protective with pleading eyes, men reveal how sincerely they love the solitude of cement floors and bare sheetrock. Apparently, when one's DNA is of the variety that allows one to gestate, one does not "get" the concept of man space.

I suggested to my father (with just a little smirk) that installing two speakers that were each larger than our furnace might not be the most ingratiating of acts toward his son-in-law. Being a very thoughtful person, my father quickly picked up on the man-space love and saw his own good fortune: a unique opportunity for free, high-quality sound amplification for himself. It only involved driving the leviathans, along with his wife and dog, some 800+ miles away through forest-fire smoke and wallet-busting gas stations back to his own shop, where he envisioned himself listening to bass-heavy bluegrass in the peace and comfort of his own man space.

This was the part where I've learned to keep my mouth shut.

My mom, however, had a few things to say about taking the speakers south. The next thing I knew, our printer was spewing out pages with the magic four letters and my father was asking if I had any tape. I know his heart was as heavy as those speakers when he hauled them down to the busy road to leave them for another loving home.

Later that afternoon, when we drove past the speakers waiting in isolation for someone to welcome them with as much love and enthusiasm as my father did, I was a bit sad. Partly because I knew (a) my neighbors were probably wondering who the SOB was that left that junk on our road and (b) we were all going to feel really badly if they ended up not finding a good home. My mom and I would feel badly that I was now saddled with dealing with unwanted, heavy audio equipment and my dad would feel badly about that and the fact that rich fidelity was being abandoned on a dirt road.

We returned a few hours later and, much to our surprise and delight, the speakers were gone; off to someone else's home, hopefully blaring out some Steve Miller Band like they were intended to do.

Mr. Wonderful, however, has decided that he would have really liked those speakers. He's informed me that if my father ever makes any suggestions in the arena of audio equipment that I must welcome such discovery with open arms. And apparently an open garage, too.

Which just goes to show that, once again, I really don't "get" the man space.

Fortunately, though, I'm pretty fond of the inhabitants.