Let me set the scene.
I am sixteen years old. I am helping build my uncle's house with a crew of family and friends on a warm summer Saturday. It is, by any teenage measure, a legitimately good day — because I also have my first date ever that evening, and a car I was working on sitting in the driveway.
For a sixteen-year-old, that's essentially everything. Someone likes me enough to want to spend time with me. I have a machine that represents freedom and adulthood and the open road. Life is, for one brief shining moment, working exactly as advertised.
Then my best friend opens his mouth and tells everyone I have a date.
There are few social settings with more concentrated peer pressure for a young man than a construction site full of the men in your family. I was about to receive a volume of advice I didn't ask for, delivered in a format I was in no position to deflect.
— — —
Here It Comes
"Girls and cars," my uncle starts. "Cars and girls. This is the worst combination ever. How much money would I have, what kind of stories would I be able to tell, if it wasn't for the time and money I spent on girls and cars."
The usual male banter. Blaming external forces for derailing our theoretical glory.
"What you need —" he continues. Here it comes. "What you need is a puppy and a bicycle."
The rest of the men nod like he's just recited scripture.
"That puppy will love you unconditionally. It will always be glad to see you, no matter what time you get home. It'll be right there waiting for you."
Someone else chimes in: "If you use a bicycle to get everywhere, you'll get in shape. It's always easy and cheap to fix. You win all the time."
"The bicycle is faster than running," another adds helpfully. "In case you had to get away from anyone."
People chasing me? Why the fuck would anyone be chasing me?
"And when you come home drunk, that puppy will still be so happy to see you."
What the fuck? People chasing me AND I'm coming home drunk already?
"That puppy won't take all your money. Feed it, pet it, love it — and it loves you back. Simple."
The group was very pleased with itself.
I was sixteen and terrified and absolutely did not need anyone wedging more doubt into my head before my first date. I filed the whole thing under: things adults say when they've run out of useful things to say.
— — —
Except Now I'm in My Fifties
Here's the thing about bad advice delivered by older men on construction sites: sometimes it ages better than you'd expect.
Set aside the misogyny of the original framing — and yes, it's there, and yes, it deserves the eye-roll. Apply the idea more broadly. Strip it down to what it's actually saying underneath the bravado and the sawdust.
What do people actually need more than anything? Love that doesn't come with conditions attached. A sense of their own worth. The knowledge that they can handle their own situation if they have to.
The puppy covers the first one. Unconditional. Uncomplicated. Present.
The bicycle covers the second and third. You got yourself there. You can fix it yourself. You don't need anyone to rescue you from a flat tire.
We do tend to complicate things in spectacular fashion. We surround ourselves with stuff like it's ballast — like enough of the right possessions will form a protective barrier between us and the storm of life. We convince ourselves we need more than we actually need, want more than will actually satisfy, chase versions of happiness that were designed by someone else for someone else's life.
At the center of all of it — underneath the noise and the accumulation and the performance — there's usually something much simpler. The atoms of what actually makes a person okay. Pure and elemental and almost embarrassingly basic once you get down to it.
I'm not saying sell everything and get a dog and a ten-speed. I'm saying: figure out what your actual version of the puppy and the bicycle is. The thing that loves you back without invoice. The thing that keeps you moving under your own power. The simple, specific, genuinely yours version of enough.
Because the complicated version — the one with the payments and the performance and the carefully maintained appearance of having it together — that one has a way of running you instead of the other way around.
Find the simple thing. Protect it. Don't let anyone talk you out of it on a construction site.
— — —
It would be really fucking hilarious if at this point I had a motorcycle with a sidecar and a dog in it, climbed on, and drove away.
Puppy and a bicycle, motherfuckers. Have a nice fucking day.
Happy Motherfucker is a book in progress — a survival guide for men navigating the wreckage of the life they thought they were building. More excerpts here regularly. Share this with the guy who needs it.