Man Cave Nightmare

I now have to sleep with a nightlight

My Man Cave is my garage.

You know what a Man Cave is, right? It’s also known as a Man Space or a Manland or a Mantuary.

I’m sure you can appreciate the sanctity of this space.

Lives are changed here; worlds are moved. Games are won or lost. The future of the (fill in the blank) is determined here. Inventions are invented here.

If ever I win the lottery, I’ll get to have the real deal, but for now and like for many of us, I’m stuck with the garage.

When I first moved into my current home, I was meticulous in placing things in the garage — anticipating a marvelous Man Cave — a place for everything and everything in its place.

I even bought new shelving units to hold all of my “stuff” safely.

By your reaction, I can see you have “stuff” too, so you know precisely the kind of “stuff” I’m talking about.

When all of my “stuff” was, well… stuffed, into the garage, I still could have parked two cars in the garage (it’s an oversized two-car garage.)

The beautiful workbench was spotless, not a speck of dust even. All the tools, extension cords, and other detritus stacked, stowed, and secured.

I thus created my Man Cave Haven.

That was about seven years ago.

Now, I can just barely get one car in the garage, even though the vehicle is smaller than the one I had seven years ago.

How the heck does this happen?

I call it “stuff-creep.”

For instance — let’s say you go to a furniture store or a garage sale or your Aunt Molly’s house.

And there it is! The perfect chair to replace that old, worn-out La-Z-Boy that’s been an eyesore for as long as I can recall.

My Chiropractor-friend, after sitting in the La-Z-Boy, said, “Jesus man, no wonder your back looks like a Frankensteinian Pretzel! Ditch this mofo!”

So you borrow your brother’ s/sister’ s/best friend’s pickup truck, and you haul “it” home.

Aunt Molly is still laughing her butt off — she’s been trying to get rid of “it” for three years.

And there “it” now proudly sits in your living room/dining room/bedroom — a chair that no human in their right mind would ever use.

The eyesore La-Z-Boy?

It is in the garage, AKA Man Cave.

And every time you go out to the garage to work on a project, you end up:

• Moving it, because it is in the way
• Using it to hold whatever it is you’re working on
• Watching the neighbor’s cat sleep on it
• Sitting in it, admiring the work you’ve just completed
• Tripping over it in the dim Man Cave special lighting
• Just sitting in it, recalling fond memories of when it was…

Regardless, instead of being a piece of furniture inside the house, the La-Z-Boy has now become a fixture in the garage, despite being condemned to the junk pile.

Or, how about…

You come back to your car after grocery shopping to find that some SOB has t-boned your car and not hung around to talk about it.

After the smoke has cleared with the insurance company, you decide that, given your spectacular automotive skills, you can repair the car yourself.

You order in two used doors, with glass and trim, from across the country, but they arrive in a week or so, and you get down to it.

A week later, you sit back in that eyesore La-Z-Boy you moved into the garage last year after replacing it with Aunt Molly’s monstrosity and admire your handiwork.

Two beautiful new doors, glass, and trim are now on the car with a perfect paint match. The whole vehicle glistens with a fresh coat of polish.

But…

There are now two crumpled car doors, with glass and trim, just sitting in your garage. And you think to yourself, “Hmmm, I think I can sell these on eBay. Surely someone needs them.”

And there they still sit today, waiting for that buyer who must exist, but doesn’t know you’ve listed those doors on eBay for two years, lowered the price a jillion times and all but given the suckers away.

One more, just because…

Imagine. A roommate moves in “temporarily.”

I can tell by the way you’re groaning that you already know the end of this part, but I’ve got to finish strong, so bear with me as I push through the pain, please.

The roommate has a ton of crap because “they’re between places to live,” so you shove, shovel, shift, and otherwise pile stuff on top of stuff to make enough room for the roommate’s crap.

Yay, it all fits into the garage, taking up maybe 33% of the space.

But that’s okay, you think, as you sit back in that fucking La-Z-Boy and survey your Man Cave that has turned into Fred Sanford’s back yard.

The tears flow copiously.

Two months go by, and the roommate announces they’ve got a new job in Hoboken and will leave in two days, but will get their crap moved out there “just as soon as possible.”

And there it sits. I can hear the mice and other vermin crawling around in it.

The roommate hooked up with a significant other and didn’t need their crap anymore, but since the relationship isn’t going too well, maybe you could hang on to it for a little longer, just in case — please?

Okay, I’ll stop there. I know you get the picture.

If there is an earthquake, I’ll never see my car again.

But that fucking La-Z-Boy?

It will outlast us all.