--Order the book!! -- Recently, a professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, Mike Magnuson, published a book. The title - Lummox: The Evolution of Man - it's a stirring, yet vulgar novel into the life of a true lummox. So what is a lummox? The dictionary describes it as "a clumsy person." Some regard them as stupid and oafish. Mike Magnuson goes into much more detail. I quote:
"He's your guy guy, your man's man, your guy-with-a-spare-tire guy, your guy whose clothes don't fit quite the way they should. He drinks too much beer and likes...doing anything that keeps him from having to hang around with his girlfriend or wife or his children or anybody who is not a lummox like himself. He's been known to stare at fine [women] when he sees [them] in public places. He's been known to scratch himself at inappropriate times. And he leaves pizza boxes in the living room, drops his socks on the floor. He doesn't give a crap about ironing his shirts or making his bed or changing his sheets. He farts and he belches without excusing himself, and he doesn't put the toilet lid down or clean the crud from the toilet base once a week. He doesn't even wash his hands after he pisses, if he bothers to go indoors in the first place" (Borrowed from "Lummox" pg.3)
So what do ya' think I did when my wife told me I was a Lummox like Mike Magnuson describes? I did what any true lummox of a man would do...I scratched myself and said, "Aw, Hell." The truth is I'm not what Mike portrays completely. I've never been much of a drinker, but damn, I could go for a Pepsi right now. As for "staring at fine lookin' women...in public places," doesn't every man do that to a degree? A single man will stare longer than a dating man and him more than a married man. Well, I got married two days into this year, so now I'm at that shortest end of the "staring spectrum," but that doesn't mean I'm dead. I still stare some.
Everything else, when it comes to being a Lummox, is exactly me. Some of it is obviously toned down since I got hitched to this beautiful woman. A woman who I believe is sometimes a "wanna-be" lummox. No, not your Big Bertha type described by Mike; she just allows herself to occasionally let loose from the standards of a sophisticated woman. You know - unladylike stuff. She enjoys burping or farting when she needs to, but only in the privacy of our home and she doesn't really enjoy cleaning up - though she does clean when she needs to. Interestingly enough, she is also part of that crowd of women who find the common lummox unnecessary to today's society. She is almost a college graduate, therefore, she has that "certain type of education" Mike describes. So why does she tolerate me? I think she secretly envies the freedom of a true lummox.
Mike lets you see some basic freedoms of man, yet at the same time he describes the pain or uncomfortable times of being so free. Not everyone lived in an elementary school like Mike, but hasn't almost every true lummox (mostly male) lived in that dump of a place. I've probably lived in about five, so you could say that all my dumpy places add up to that one Mike lived in. It's funny how all those crappy places seem to come equipped with the bizarre buddies that you wouldn't hang out with unless you were a lummox. If you weren't a lummox you'd probably feel sorry for them or repulsed by them, but no way is hell would you become their friend. I've got a few buddies like that.
In some ways I may even be that "whacked out" buddy to someone else. True, my wife and I are married, but we're friends first and foremost. She has this best friend, who happens to be a gay guy that would not hang out with me except that I'm married to his best friend. Really, he doesn't hang out with me even now. I think I'm too "manly" for him, you know. His clothes are always perfect; he's your thin type (no beer or Pepsi gut); he's not really into sports and you'd never catch a gaseous whiff protruding from him. I'm that guy he's tried to avoid his whole life. That guy that is ninety-five percent opposite of everything he wants to be as a man. Oh well, I probably wouldn't have hung out with him either. He's cool though and we have become cordial friends.
I wondered, as I lumbered through Mike's life with him, what it meant to have "a [sissy's] heart." Does that mean you're afraid to get into a fight with any guy on the playground? Or even a girl, for that matter? I concluded that it meant you just have something passionate in your heart other than the mundane ways of a lummox. Mine is literature - I love to write. Nothing specific, just about anything will do, as long as I can make something interesting out of it. I like bringing magic to someone's life through words and Yes, even flowery words. To write well, you have to read well and a lot. Poetry has been an avenue I traveled down for many years and I started by reading my Mother's work. They were mostly love stories to my Dad, but they stirred something inside me that I didn't know I had - genuine interest in something "artful." I began writing my own poetry - stuff from my heart. The kind of gushy crap that makes people look into their souls, miss their lover, and even cry.
One time on a visit back to the folk's house, just after I'd turned twenty-three, I showed some of these poems to my Mother and Sister. They laughed. "You didn't write this," they said to me. They said they knew me and what I had written wasn't the person they knew. "I did write it," I screamed back at them. They said that I must have lied because they knew I didn't think like this. Maybe they were right, so I started writing more "manly" poetry - cowboy type poetry. Two years later I realized that they were right, as far as they knew. I also discovered that I had been right too. My heart and my outer portrayal of me were drastically different. I was both a lummox and a sissy. It just depended on where you were looking, the outside or the inside. It's interesting though that I won't show my poetry to my Dad. A man brought up during a time when the soul of a lummox was praised and perfected. Maybe I'm afraid he'd disown me as a son, calling me a sissy boy.
Now I'm in my first year of college at the age of twenty-six and I'm a little more comfortable with the blend of my two selves. I've ventured into showing others the words that I pen out for my pleasure. I'm not afraid to show my "sissy boy" self to my Dad. That was made easier when I found out that he "secretly" read and wrote his own poetry - cowboy stuff. I'm also comfortable with the fact that I'm a lummox with a southern hick twist. Mike Magnuson alludes to the fact that some want to "kill off" the lummox. This won't ever happen. Why? Because each day the world spins, the basic lummox of a man is teaching his sons, and even daughters today, those barbaric ways of survival that have lasted for all time.
-Joshua Magill