Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys Paperback - 1996

Are You a Guy?
Take This Scientific Quiz to Determine Your Guyness Quotient

1. Alien beings from a highly advanced society visit the Earth, and you are the first human they encounter. As a token of intergalactic friendship, they present you with a small but incredibly sophisticated device that is capable of curing all disease, providing an infinite supply of clean energy, wiping out hunger and poverty, and permanently eliminating oppression and violence all over the entire Earth. You decide to:
a. Present it to the president of the United States.
b. Present it to the secretary general of the United Nations.
c. Take it apart.

2. As you grow older, what lost quality of your youthful life do you miss the most?
a. Innocence.
b. Idealism.
c. Cherry bombs.

3. When is it okay to kiss another male?
a. When you wish to display simple and pure affection without regard for narrow-minded social conventions.
b. When he is the pope. (Not&nbsp on the lips.)
c. When he is your brother and you are Al Pacino and this is the only really sportsmanlike way to let him know that, for business reasons, you have to have him killed.

4. What about hugging&nbsp another male?
a. If he's your father and at least one of you has a fatal disease.
b. If you're performing the Heimlich maneuver. (And even in this case, you should repeatedly shout: "I am just dislodging food trapped in this male's trachea! I am not in any way aroused!"
c. If you're a professional baseball player and a teammate hits a home run to win the World Series, you may hug him provided that (1) He is legally within the basepath, (2) Both of you are wearing protective cups, and (3) You also pound him fraternally with your fist hard enough to cause fractures.

5. Complete this sentence:&nbsp A funeral is a good time to
a. ...remember the deceased and console his loved ones.
b. ...reflect upon the fleeting transience of earthly life.
c. ...tell the joke about the guy who has Alzheimer's disease and&nbsp cancer.

6. In your opinion, the ideal pet is:
a. A cat.
b. a dog.
c. A dog that eats cats.

7. You have been seeing a woman for several years. She's attractive and intelligent, and you always enjoy being with her. One leisurely Sunday afternoon the two of you are taking it easy -- you're watching a football game; she's reading the papers -- when she suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, tells you that she thinks she loves you, but she can no longer bear the uncertainty of not knowing where your relationship is going. She says she's not asking whether you want to get married; only whether you believe that you have some kind of future together. What do you say?
a. That you sincerely believe the two of you do have a future, but you don't want to rush it.
b. That although you also have strong feelings for her, you cannot honestly say that you'll be ready anytime soon to make a lasting commitment, and you don't want to hurt her by holding out false hope.
c. That you cannot believe&nbsp the Jets called a draw play on third and seventeen.

8. Okay, so you have decided that you truly love a woman and you want to spend the rest of your life with her -- sharing the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and the tragedies, and all the adventures and opportunities that the world has to offer, come what may. How do you tell her?
a. You take her to a nice restaurant and tell her after dinner.
b. You take her for a walk on a moonlit beach, and you say her name, and when she turns to you, with the sea breeze blowing her hair and the stars in her eyes, you tell her.
c. Tell her what?&nbsp

9. One weekday morning your wife wakes up feeling ill and asks you to get your three children ready for school. Your first question to her is:
a. "Do they need to eat or anything?"
b. "They're in school&nbsp already?"
c. "There are three&nbsp of them?"

10. When is it okay to throw away a set of veteran underwear?
a. When it has turned the color of a dead whale and developed new holes so large that you're not sure which ones were originally intended for your legs.
b. When it is down to eight loosely connected underwear molecules and has to be handled with tweezers.
c. It is never&nbsp] okay to throw away veteran underwear. A real guy checks the garbage regularly in case somebody -- and we are not naming names, but this would be his wife -- is quietly trying to discard his underwear, which she is frankly jealous of, because the guy seems to have a more intimate relationship with it than with her.

11. What, in your opinion, is the most reasonable&nbsp explanation for the fact that Moses led the Israelites all over the place for forty years before they finally got to the Promised Land?
a. He was being tested.
b. He wanted them to really appreciate the Promised Land when they finally got there.
c. He refused to ask directions.

12. What is the human race's single greatest achievement?
a. Democracy.
b. Religion.
c. Remote control.

How to Score: Give yourself one point for every time you picked answer "c." A real guy would score at least 10 on this test. In fact, a ]real&nbsp] guy would score at least 15, because he would get the special five-point bonus for knowing the joke about the guy who has Alzheimer's disease ]and&nbsp cancer.

"[A] laugh-out-loud book."
--People

"AN AVERAGE OF THREE TO FOUR LAUGHS PER PAGE . . . DAVE BARRY IS ONE FUNNY HUMAN."
--San Francisco Examiner


From the Paperback edition.

Dave Barry is a professional journalist. In this capacity, he has test-fired a potato cannon, driven the world's fastest lawnmower, barfed in an F-16 fighter jet, played the part of a corpse in an opera, picked his son up at junior high school in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, and used a sparking Barbie doll to set fire to a pair of underpants on national television. But he also has a frivolous side.