Why Men Have Nipples

You've seen (and promptly forwarded to all your friends) the clever little emails with the list of unanswerable questions such as, "Why did Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?" and "Why is there braille on drive-up ATMs?" One of my personal favorites is the perennial anatomical puzzler, "Why do men have nipples?" I'm sure evolutionists (who I've found generally lack a sense of humor) have opined in sonorous tones about vestigial remnants etc ad nauseam. I have my own theory, courtesy of cable TV.

As I've watched broadcast TV in the hotel room this week, for the first time in quite a while, it has dawned on me exactly why men have nipples: we are evolving into women. Strange but true. Consider the parade of foppish, effeminate, bed-headed metrosexual slobs who pass for masculine today. Now cast your mind back along the timeline. Remember that picture of your grandfather in his crisp new dress uniform? There was fire in those eyes; the best we can manage nowadays is a twinkle. That tan was baked-in, not sprayed-on. And for heaven's sake, that high-and-tight haircut never even SAW "product".

The only difference between this and other evolutionary theories is that in this scenario we are NOT evolving into higher life forms (not to say that women are lower life forms; rather, any male describing an item of clothing as "fabulous" is a sign that the gene pool needs some chlorine). But don't worry -- this process is reversible. First, we capture enough of these "metros" to form a decent gene pool. Shouldn't be hard--clothes horses, like other horses, tend to run in herds. Then we duct tape them to chairs (duct tape can be obtained at the Home Depot -- that's the big store next to the Supercuts). The next step is to tuck their shirt-tails in and button their sleeves. If they're wearing a ball cap, we turn it around so the bill is once again functioning properly. Then comes the most important step:

Pop a copy of High Noon into the DVD player and wait. When Gary Cooper strides down the middle of the dusty street, on his own in the face of a town of cowards and a group of men out to kill him, for no other reason than that it's the right thing to do, you point to him and say, "You see the guy with the tin star? THAT is how a man carries himself."

Or, better yet, "You see that carpenter hanging on the cross, bleeding and broken yet finishing the job because it's the right thing to do? THAT is how a man carries himself."

Now, tuck in your shirt. Make your grandpa proud.