It's no wonder men have a difficult time understanding and defining our
place in society nowadays: never before have we been so close to being
evicted from the gene pool. The perpetuation of the species will depend
on women for another century or more--even a clone needs a womb--but
men are literally a decade of stem cell research away from biological
obsolescence. This is why men are so leery of stem cell research, if
only on a subconscious level. "Sure it might open the floodgates to new
cures and treatments for disease," men think, "but there's something
about a 'master cell' that can be turned into any other kind of cell
that's raising a little red flag way down in my cerebral.... Hey, is
that leftover fried chicken?"

To stave off the inevitable phase-out we men need to remind women how
vital we are to their happiness. And if not so much to their happiness,
to their health. And if not exactly to their health, then to other very
important things. There are many, many tasks we perform that women are
unwilling or unable to do. Fewer every year, certainly, but there's still
a handful left. So on the behalf of my fellow men I offer the following
list as a final plea to our future female overlords:

We are willing to dispose of all decapitated rabbits the cat leaves
on the roof.
Our cat Muffin likes to carry mice, moles and still-flapping birds up
onto the flat roof outside my children's bedroom window and leave them
there for all to admire. God only knows how he managed to get a rabbit
onto a second-story roof, but last week he did, and when I looked out
the window it was like a scene from The Godfather For Kids out there.

However, once I got over the initial horror I saw an opportunity. I
knew there was no way my wife was going to deal with that. So I made
sure to call her attention to the problem, then heroically tackled
it by holding my breath, pinching up my face and carefully tossing
both bunny parts off into oblivion. When I remembered that below this
roof was the storage area where the kids stow their bikes, I scampered
downstairs and searched through the day lilies. The larger part was easy
to spot, but the smaller, much more critically important part to find,
was missing and presumed terrifying. With visions of my six-year-old,
who finds everything, reacting to such a discovery I tore up the plants
and threw them onto the lawn, only to notice several frantic minutes later
that Little Peter had been in the grass all along.

The WNBA will never catch on.
I could be wrong about that, but even if it does, the WNFL and WNHL will
never catch on. Although more and more girls seem to be playing hockey
and Pop Warner these days.... Let me start over. Without men, the entire
sport of bikini mud wrestling would cease to exist. Is that what you
want? Hang on, I'm starting again...

We don't mind mining so much.
Zinc mining is a huge pain in the rear; you don't wanna go there. And
believe me you need the zinc. I mean, you look great. Don't get me wrong.
But a breakfast isn't complete without zinc.

We can fix most cars built before 1990.
The carbureted engine, the manual transmission, distributors, rotors--we
can almost understand these technologies. If your early-model car breaks
down, please give us a shot at it. Our motto is, "We just might save you
some money!"

You like men, remember?
Think back before you were married. Before you were engaged. Before you
knew a whole heck of a lot about us. You liked us. I swear you did. I
know we've abused our power in the past, but we're cuddling better all
the time. Wait! We're funny! And who else can sing bass?! We can take you
down with us! No stem cell research! Stop!

John Lengyel lived in Cohasset, before the gender-cleansing campaigns of
2015, and the Great Beer Glut of 2016.