♪
I'm sitting at the dining room table
in my girlfriend's parents' home.
I'm eating a cookie.
My girlfriend, Lisa, is beside me, and she's talking,
but I don't hear a word that she says.
I'm staring at the front door.
I'm waiting.
I'm waiting for it to open and for her father to come home.
I'm a 19-year-old boy waiting to meet my girlfriend's father
for the very first time.
And I am terrified.
And then the door opens, and the man walks in.
And I stand, and we meet in the middle,
and I reach my hand out to shake his.
And as his hand wraps over mine,
I can feel the roughness of his skin,
I can feel the calluses,
I can see the dirt and the grime under his fingernails.
It's like shaking hands with a Brillo pad.
These are hands that build and repair.
This is a man who can fix plumbing.
He's a guy who can change his own oil.
He's the type of guy who can take a tree down
and then, like, put it back up if necessary.
(laughter)
And as I'm shaking his hand,
I realize I'm in a lot of trouble.
Because my hands are nothing like his.
I have the hands of a boy who plays Ms. Pac-Man
at the arcade on Friday nights.
I have hands that roll 20-sided dice
onto card tables in basements
while playing Dungeons and Dragons.
These are hands that play the flute.
These are not hands that build and repair,
these are hands that purchase and replace.
(laughter)
And as I shake his hand, I know I'm in trouble,
because I've been in this situation before.
Before I loved Lisa,
I loved Laura, my high school sweetheart.
Laura's father's name was Butch,
and he was the dictionary definition of that word.
I met him in his driveway one day,
next to his dump truck, his bucket truck,
and what I would later learn was a stump grinder.
Shaking Butch's hand was like putting your hand
into a bag of broken glass.
I asked Butch what he did for a living,
and he said, "Whatever needs to be done."
(laughter)
I am not a man who does whatever needs to be done.
I hire people to do what needs to be done.
And so as I'm shaking Lisa's father's hand now,
I know I'm in trouble.
Because the reason Laura and I aren't together anymore
is because even though she loved me,
she respected her father more
than any woman I have ever met in my life,
and I was never going to match what he was.
And now I am worried that I'm not going to match
what this man is, either.
And I'm already starting out behind.
Lisa's father is a car guy,
and six months ago, I owned a 1976 Chevy Malibu with a 357 V8.
I don't know what those numbers mean,
except I know that car guys like those numbers.
But I have sold that car,
and I am now driving a powder-blue Toyota Tercel.
He looks at my car,
and I swear he wants to punch me in the face.
He asks me where I live, and I tell him,
"In Attleborough, with some of my friends,"
but I can never take him to my home,
because it is the home of boys.
The walls are plastered with Bart Simpson posters.
I've got two rabbits that run around my house like cats,
they use the litter box and eat out of bowls.
We got them because we thought we would get girls,
which we actually kind of do, but he can't see this.
And we have 20 hamsters that are spread out in cages
all over the house, with tubes, connecting all over.
It's like Steampunk Hamsterville.
Wherever you're standing, there is a hamster over your head.
(laughter)
I cannot bring this man into this world of boys.
And I am a McDonald's manager.
And I know it's the hardest job I will ever do in my life,
but to him, I know, I am flipping burgers.
It is going to be a hard win in this case, but I've got a plan.
I'm going to win this guy over.
He's Portuguese, so I decide
I'm going to learn everything about Portugal,
which in 1991 is a very big deal.
Because to learn something in '91,
you have to go to a brick building during office hours.
You have to slide open a card, and find that card,
and use it to find a book,
and none of those books have "Control-F."
You have to read the whole damn book
to find the one fact that you are looking for
to impress your girlfriend's father.
It is a commitment that I stick to.
And then my rabbits become a problem,
because they're chewing through the cords.
They've knocked out our television and one of our lamps.
My buddies and I decide we need to get rid of the rabbits.
And one day, I'm at Lisa's house,
and I see that her father has a hutch full of rabbits.
And so I say, "I've got a problem with my rabbits, sir.
Would you like my rabbits?"
And he says, "Yes."
And I swear, as I pass my rabbits over to him,
it's like we get closer.
Like, we don't become friends, but we become friendly.
And then he invites me to Thanksgiving dinner.
And this is a big deal for me,
because for the past two years, I have not had a Thanksgiving.
My Thanksgivings are the Dallas Cowboys
and Domino's and despair.
And so having an actual, like, Thanksgiving,
with real food and a family, is a big deal for me.
And so I go to their house, and I sit at that dining room table.
I sit right beside him.
It's like having the father I never had.
And there is turkey, and there are breads,
and there are stuffings, and there are stews.
And I feel like a member of the family-- I have done it.
And then he turns to me, and he says,
"What do you think of my stew?"
And I say, "I love it."
And he says, "You should.
It's your rabbit."
(groans and laughter)
And I can't believe it.
I turn to Lisa to see if she's in on this,
and she's just as appalled as I am.
And so I turn back to this man, and he is smiling.
He thinks it's funny that he has just fed me my pet rabbit.
We stare at each other for what is probably three seconds,
but feels like three years.
There is silence at the table.
And then I stand up, and for the first time in my life,
I speak to a man like a man.
I tell him what a terrible thing he has done,
I swear at him at his dining room table.
I tell him exactly what is in my heart,
and then I turn, and I leave his house.
My hands are just as soft as when I was 19 years old.
I cannot change oil, I cannot fix a single thing in my house,
I cannot assemble a single one of my children's toys.
But that was the moment a 19-year-old boy stood up
and became a 19-year-old man,
and for the first time in his life,
he told another man exactly how he felt.
Thank you.
(applause)