Atomic Dog
Who Gives a Shit?
by TC

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

He said, when faced with what I thought was a problem, "Who gives a sheet?"

He was an immigrant from Finland so naturally, English wasn’t his first language. That’s why "shit" came out sounding like "sheet." I don’t remember exactly what it was he didn’t give a sheet about, but it could have been one of any number of things. And therein lies the beauty and wisdom of the statement.

It took me a long time to appreciate the meaning of the phrase, but lately, it’s become almost a mantra to me. Go ahead, say it out loud. It’s enormously empowering:

Who gives a shit?

Or maybe you prefer the personal pronoun rather than a relative one:

I don’t give a shit.

Lest you think I’m just some potty-mouthed nihilist, let me quickly say that there are a lot of things that I do give a shit about. Like my mate and my hound for instance, and this-here mag, along with Biotest, Tim, Chris, the guys who work for the company, thongs, Wonder bras, Kung Pao chicken, natural grass baseball fields, The Sopranos, iron, books; that sleek blond bitch in yoga class who could, if properly compensated, nuzzle her own ass; the morning newspaper, high heels, triples, Diet Coke, squats, the occasional Canadian whiskey, nipples the exact shade of pink as a Mary Kay cosmetics company car, and the sound the loons make as they descend on Golden Pond at sunset.

What I don’t give a shit about is stuff that has little bearing on my health or well being or the health or well being of others. Oh, I used to give a shit about almost everything, but what I gave a shit about most was what people thought of me.

It was of course, the worst when I was a teenager. Oh, the efforts I made to fit in! I wasn’t "bad" enough to hang with the tough guys, and I wasn’t good enough in sports to hang with the jocks. As a last resort, I tried to become a cheerleader. I did everything I could to try and fit in. I wore the same clothes that they did, practiced their same moves, and even wore my hair the same way. They kept turning me down, using the excuse that it was an all-girl squad and that having a boy join the team just wouldn’t work, pleated skirt or no pleated skirt.

It didn’t just stop there. I agonized over everything. Were my clothes hip enough? Did people think I was too smart? Not smart enough? Was my official Star Trek Com badge on straight? Please Lord, don’t let me trip when I’m walking with my lunch tray. And God, just don’t let them see my parents. After all, they’re fer-ners and they talk funny.

But I suppose all that’s pretty normal. I’ve yet to meet a totally confident, self-actualized teenager. While we typically think that really young people are non-conformists, they’re often the greatest conformists of all. How else do you explain the armies of kids wearing crotch-down-to-the-knees pants and backward baseball caps, all listening to the same occasionally crappy music?

It didn’t get much better in my twenties. I still gave a shit about what people thought. My hair had to be just right when I left the house. Hell, Sam Malone had nothing on me. The clothes had to be just right, and rather than let people see the rattrap I was driving, I’d park waaayyy in the back.

If I were working out, I’d always sacrifice form for weight, because I didn’t want anyone to see me working out with anything remotely less than the Russian heavyweight Olympic powerlifter Vasily Alexeyev.

And sex was often murder unless I was at least a little toasted. If I was entertaining some tasty morsel and I walked out of the john with a little piece of toilet paper stuck on my schlong, I would have been mortified. I would have ran back in the bathroom, locked the door, removed my Captain American mask and cape and started weeping.

Granted, I’m not entirely free of all that crap yet, but I’m making progress.

For instance, I wouldn’t care nowadays if I left the john with a whole roll of toilet paper trailing behind me. I’d just gather it up, wrap it around my manhood and say, "Hey baby, ever been dicked by a mummy?"

You think I could write a column like this one even ten years ago? Hell no. I would have worried about what people thought of me. I would have worried that they thought I was some kind of weird duck, and the occasional "you’re a jerk" e-mail would have bothered me a lot more than it does now. In fact, it would have paralyzed me. It would have been enough to cause me to restrict my writing to something safe, like maybe a series of Hallmark cards with drawings of kids and puppy dogs:

Love is all, like a horse in a stall…

Well, maybe not, but even now, when I meet some supposedly refined or sophisticated woman and she wants to know what I do for a living, I feel a little bit of anxiety. I imagine them reading one of my Atomic Dog columns; like maybe my love doll column, or my panty-bin diving column, or worse yet, my masturbation column, during which they swoon, hit the parlor floor face first, and then wrinkle their pant suits as they crawl toward their asthma inhalers.

But really, who gives a shit? I make no apologies for what I am, and that’s a man; a man in the Dionysian mode, one who, like that Greek God, gets off on action, emotion, sexuality, song, and the occasional glass of vino. I’m every bit as "moral" as anyone else; I’m just a bit more in touch with my Testosterone side.

I like soft-core porn. It gives me an emotional charge when I see it hanging on the walls of my office. I like strip clubs. I like sliding on my wife’s pantyhose and the delicious feeling I get when I see my leg hair all matted up and… er, never mind. I like painting my house bright, Crayola colors, and I decorate weird. If neighborhood parents can’t afford to take their kids to Disney Land, they bring them over to my place.

Do some people snicker and smack their foreheads at my so-called eccentricities? Probably, but they’re most likely dull, unimaginative people who don’t interest me.

I drive an older car. I could afford to buy another one, but what the hell for? Who am I trying to impress? A few years ago, I might have had trouble doing some of Ian King’s routines, the ones that are so exhausting or so difficult that they force me to use poundages that wouldn’t even make adequate paperweights. Now, I couldn’t care less what people think of my baby weights. And once in awhile, just for grins, I’ll walk up to some big mother and ask him if he’s using the 5-pound weights, just so I can see him puff up and get all indignant.

I’ve got a friend, though, who’s the ultimate I-don’t-give-a-shit person. I’ll go over to his house occasionally and the stereo will be blasting, only he won’t be listening to heavy metal or even anything that approaches rock. Instead, he’ll be listening to something by the Carpenters, or he’ll be groovin’ on the old song, "Windy." I’ll shade my eyes and peek through his window and there he’ll be, in his white Hanes underwear, doing the frug and just jammin’:

"Who’s skipping down the streets of the city, smiling at everybody she sees?"

He’s about as square as they come, but he doesn’t give a shit. Of course, I ain’t anywhere near that evolved. For instance, a few minutes ago, I walked downstairs to grab some more coffee and noticed the grocery list that’s always stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. My wife had written, "New buff puff for TC" on it. For a minute, panic gripped my throat as I imagined that note falling into the wrong hands. Why, if people saw my name associated with something so un-Testosteronish as a buff puff, my very future, my very reputation as a T-man would plummet like Homer Simpson falling off a rocky mountain, one "D’oh!" after the other.

Maturity and my mantra, "Who gives a shit?" kicked in and once again, I was serene.

My humble advice is to give a shit about things that deserve it. It makes life a lot more enjoyable. Besides, people can sense that "I don’t give a shit" attitude. A few of them will even see you as super cool, and pretty soon you’ll be calling the shots when it comes to fashion and style. Plus, that kind of attitude, when applied to the amount of weight you use or the exercises you do, will ultimately pay off big-time. And that’s something worth giving a sheet about.

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