‘PRETTY BOY.’ WHEN IT’S NOT A COMPLIMENT

“Pretty boy” isn’t what you expected to be called?

And you didn’t like it.

So what do you do?

Here’s what I did:

A man in his early sixties worked a young man’s job and suffered.

His neck, his knees, his back. Everything hurt.

He was manly enough to work through it, but not manly enough to keep it to himself.

The first time I heard him complain I thought, ‘Shouldn’t he be talking this stuff to his mother, his wife, his dog? Maybe his doctor and not me?’

What would you think if you heard it? I took it as foreshadowing to an unwelcome future.

That future arrived during a review of his work, which he’d start with an incredible pitch.

He was the right guy, he said, because of his attention to detail, uncompromising standards, and being on time.

There was a lot more, but that’s what stood out to me. Detail? He pays attention to detail.

Is that a bragging point for a seasoned professional?

Why wouldn’t he pay attention to detail and why would he tell me something I figured out since it wasn’t his first job.

And standards? He said they were high. Something was high.

It all came into play during final review of the project.

I had a list and read it to him. His response?

“Okay, pretty boy, stand over there while I talk to your wife.”

Another man called me ‘Pretty Boy?’

That ain’t right, but . . .

Pretty Like Muhammad Ali

Ali was the first celebrity-athlete-fighter to show his concern for looking pretty.

I found that hilarious.

The guy was a prize fighter getting punched in the face and he talked pretty boy talk.

It was a taunt to his opponents, that they could hit as hard as they could and he’d still be pretty.

I liked it then and still like it. Why not ‘pretty boy’ like Ali?

Could I have taken the man who called me pretty?

In my mind I would have jabbed and back-pedaled, ducked his swing and gone inside with a left hook to the body, the ‘liver punch’, and finished with a hammer-blow right hand to his melon as he went down.

You know, the usual MMA fantasy ending instead of the polite, civilized, results.

Or Pretty Like Paul McCartney, The Cute Beatle

I aged myself when I asked the surgery crew if they knew the Beatles.

One of them said yes, the oldest one, maybe forty.

“Of course I know The Beatles.”

I believed her, so I took it one step further and asked if she remembered who the ‘Cute one’ was?

She didn’t, so I told her.

“I’m the cute one in my band, the pretty boy, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

They did good work and turned me loose with a patch.

That night the whole family went to the movies to help take my mind off getting hacked on.

We saw ‘1917’, a movie full of war wounded with head bandages.

I fit right in.

The Pretty Boy Stands Down

“Okay, pretty boy, stand over there while I talk to your wife.”

No problem. I handed my list to my wife and didn’t move a muscle, but 225 lbs of spring steel was ready to dance.

I’d seen action on familiar ground before.

Not this time.

My wife read the list, pointed out the problems we could live with and the ones that needed a fix.

The fixes were the sort a rookie cabinet maker does when they don’t include the width of a saw blade, the kerf, in their final measurement.

Ask me how I know?

The big talker made the sort of rookie mistake that comes from a lack of attention to detail and poor craftsmanship and low standards.

Now I know.

If you bump out an exterior wall on new foundation you measure from the outside.

Forget that part and measure from the inside and you are short the width of the foundation pour.

Broken down in pretty boy terms, you end up with a curved wall that some jackass might call normal.

Normal, or Abby Normal?