Few newspaper writers have that gift to capture life's everyday experiences and ably transcribe them onto paper. Certainly at first, they appear to start with a general topic and work towards the specific, but inevitably they end up doing what we all do, which is talk about themselves. After all, you're supposed to write about what you know. Right?
I've been reading Dave Barry for over a decade now, and one thing I appreciate about his style is that you can't tell what aspects in his articles have literally happened to him, and which were things he either observed in a shopping mall, or noticed while visiting a friend's home, or happened to someone else while he was using a public washroom. Maybe some of his descriptions were forwarded to him by a fan of his writings. Or maybe he's just really good at camouflaging the most bizarre of scenarios that may have actually happened to him. Regardless, it's uncanny how specific he can get when he actually does write "My wife said this..." or "Just the other day, I caught my kids doing this...", there is almost an aspect of fiction to his anecdotes. And yet, the examples are so frequently, eerily right on the mark, you gotta wonder where the material is coming from.
I picked up a four-part book of his at a yard sale recently, entitled Dave Barry's Guide to Life. I read the first few pages and I was hooked. It at this point that I would like to point out that I am a very slow reader, and that the book is 372 pages in length, but I still finished it only a few weeks after I'd purchased it. Okay yes, there are little cartoon pictures. And yes, the type is really big on the page. But that doesn't make my accomplishment any less valid thank you very much, considering I've had a very busy summer.
All of the included novellas were written in the 1980's, but seem just as fresh and relevant today (not counting a couple of drawings of Mr. T -- don't ask). The first is "Guide to Marriage and/or Sex". It's a really scathing look at the dating scene and sex (he writes that "as a rule, women would like to devote as much time to foreplay and the sex act as men would like to devote to foreplay, the sex act, and building a garage"). It leads up to the traumas of planning and having a wedding. For good measure, he throws in stuff about couples living together, the decision to have kids, and sharing finances. Oh, and of course there is mention of family and in-laws.
The second book is "Babies and Other Hazards of Sex". It is probably the best of the lot, as Dave has documented every behavioural trait and tendency that newborns, toddlers and preschoolers all seem to have in common. Here he also goes into the reproductive system, pregnancy, and there's even a chapter entitled "A Word about Smurfs, Snoopy, Strawberry Shortcake, and All the Other Nauseating Little Characters That You Swear You Will Never Allow in Your Home".
Fitness and sport are the topic of the third installment. "Stay Fit and Healthy Until You're Dead" is an amusing look at society's obsession with physical appearances. Nutrition and diets, operations, and men and women's grooming are all covered. So is Pig Lifting, but that's a little harder to explain.
The last book is "Claw Your Way to the Top", probably the least funny of the four. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the common workplace has changed a fair bit in the last two decades, but the novella is still an entertaining read. In one part, Barry actually refers to a modem and servers (for some reason, I was half expecting him to refer to Space Invaders or Froggers). He covers the various stages of education and its application to the workforce, then moves on to job searches, resumes, interviews, meetings, bosses, and of course, a "List of Topics that Middle-Aged White Anglo-Saxon Males Talk to Each Other About When They're Not Talking Business". So as you can see, the book is also helpful.
Dave Barry continues to write every week, and I glance his articles whenever I can, but this book, erratically random as it is, makes for an even slicker read. At one point, on a graph, he shows that 68% of a parent's time in a 24-hour day is devoted to waiting outside stalls in public restrooms. Only a few pages away from that, he mentions that children know instinctively to go to the stand-up ashtrays in shopping malls and play with the sand. It's definitely hilarious to read about... but how does he know?!
