The man card is a fictional device for super men to explain themselves.
They are manly men and they want you to know.
They want you to know so they can then tell you they’re pulling your man card.
Don’t let that happen. Nobody can pull it but the owner, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
If you are a man and you want to know how to man-up without being a jerk, without looking like a confused little boy paralyzed the first time they shinnied up a pole, you’re got work to do.
You may need to find that time machine, go back to high school, and make some changes.
Instead of smoking in the boys’ room, find your way to the wrestling room and attend one practice.
After one practice you’ll know more about yourself than anything you’ve learned so far.
You will learn to keep going when you’re exhausted, when you’ve taken it to the limit.
And that’s just during warm-ups.
After that you’ll learn how far you can bend and twist beyond any bending and twisting that’s ever happened.
You’ll get rocked by a crossface cradle, walked over by an arm-bar.
You’ll discover the half-nelson, the three-quarter nelson, full-nelson, and the father-nelson.
One practice for a man card?
If you make it through practice without calling for your momma, or running off in the middle of things, you’re on the right track.
Come back for the rest of the season? You are awesome.
Wrestling Man Card to Military Man Card
If you wet the bed in your late teens and early twenties, don’t join the Army.
If you do join the Army, don’t choose the top bunk in the barracks and leak on the guy in the bottom bunk.
They won’t appreciate you. They might seek retribution.
Join the Army before you get out of diapers and you’ll be discharged as unfit for duty.
No man card for you.
But people grow up and mature.
In the course or events, of gaining maturity, the story changes.
Dudes tell their story: I was a triple crown state champ, the top guy in boot camp, and could have kept going.
Some doe-eyed soft man explaining their hard earned man card is too laughable.
But it happens. Guys keep a full dress blue Army uniform in the closet to explain their time in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, without ever leaving home.
That’s valor, made up valor, stolen valor.