I want to grow up to be Bob Snyder

Bob Snyder is a guy I went to school with. One of the nicest guys you'll ever want to meet. I think we started playing softball together when we were 10 or 11 years old, then later we played football together in middle school and high school until Bob (a quarterback) suffered a terrible injury that ended his football career.

Anyway, Bob's a good man who still lives here in Wickliffe with his wife Michele (also a former classmate of mine), daughter Hannah, and son Bobby.

He's also pretty much my hero, though he doesn't know it.

The reason is, besides being an all-around good guy, Bob is also the definition of a Man's Man. And I don't mean he's stupidly macho or anything as much I mean he does manly things. And he teaches his son to do manly things.

Like hunting and fishing. Calling Bob an avid outdoorsman is an understatement. He's out in the woods all the time doing the kinds of things that end up as multi-page photo essays in Field & Stream. And he teaches his son to do these things. They do them together, and they take pictures of themselves doing them together, and I gotta tell you, they always look happy in those pictures.

One day it's Bob posing next to a big buck he has bagged during deer hunting season, the next day it's Bobby holding up a gigantic fish he has caught.

I've never hunted, and I've fished a literal handful of times. Terry knows way more about fishing than I do.

At the risk of gender stereotyping, that doesn't feel right to me. I feel like Jared and Jack should know how to fish, and that they should learn it from me. And I feel like I should have gained some hunting experience at some point and I should have taught them to do that, too.

This is a clear-cut case of Testosterone Envy, I realize, but it still nags at me.

Bob is also very handy, and more than once on this blog I've documented my own lack of handiness and the difficulties it creates in life. If you were to put Bob on a deserted island with only a rusty machete and four feet of rope, he would create a livable hut in a few hours.

I, on the other hand, would perish from exposure. And from starvation, since Bob would instinctively know how to hunt and cook his own food, while I would try to subsist on sand and bird droppings.

This is not to imply that I don't have a close relationship with my sons. It turns out I do. But with Jared it's based on our mutual love of sports and cats (and cats playing sports), while with Jack it's based on...well, actually, I'm not sure what it's based on. We just get along really well.

But as a dad, you feel like there are manly skills that you're required to pass along to your sons, and I'm passing along very little in that department. I'll make sure they both know how to check the fluids and tires on their cars, and I can teach them the offsides rules in both soccer and hockey. But beyond that, there's really nothing specifically man-oriented they're going to get from me.

I need to take them over to Bob's house. I'll bet he can teach them how to spit really well in addition to the whole hunting, fish and tool thing.