What’s up Castleton? It’s me! It’s me! It’s your good buddy R.C. with another edition of everyone’s favorite aphrodisiac, That’s That – your source for what’s what. Now tell me Castleton, what is a real man? Anyone? Anyone? Because apparently I don’t know. I was having a conversation with a fellow student, a female student who shall remain nameless, and we happened to get on the topic of fixing cars. Now I’ll be honest: when it comes to fixing cars, the best I can do is give you my best guess and a smile — a nice smile too, if I do say so myself.

Anyway, she asks me if I knew how to check the oil. Please Lady! I know that you use the dip stick to check how low your oil is, though I’ve never done it before. Then she asks me again if I knew how to change the oil. I told her I didn’t. She asks why not? My father would always take care of any of my car-related trouble. Then, and this is the kicker, she tells me that I’m not a real man. What nerve? How dare she? I mean I’ve pumped gas before. But other than that I really don’t know too much. And it shows. I’ve totaled three cars — four if you count the BMW I slammed head on with. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not a real man. I did a little investigating to find out what a real man truly is.

My first stop was at a local Chinese restaurant. I walked up to the counter, ordered the general tsao’s chicken, and asked what a real man was. He then said, “Fifteen minutes,” wiped his brow, turned and walked away. At that point I promised myself to never again ask a Korean man working in a Chinese restaurant for advice.

My next stop would be the office of one of my professor’s — the Obi-Wan to my Anakin really. I walked into my professor’s office, and unloaded a large assortment of stresses I had been going through including my encounter with this certain female. His advice? “You should date more.”

I was baffled. Why did he say that? I later found out that he was giving me advice from an old edition of That’s That! Though it was good advice, it was irrelevant to my current situation.

I was desperate. And when a young man gets desperate for some manly advice, he turns to his father. So one random Sunday afternoon I called my father. “Hey dad, how’s it going?” “Good sonny. What about you?” “Oh, I’m fine. Say, Dad, what makes a man a real man?”

And let me tell you Castleton, he set the record straight. He said, “Listen, a real man is great in bed. He’s not good, he’s great. A real man can and will spend money, especially for his woman. A real man will cry, but he won’t let anyone see him do it. And a real man can dance.” I replied, “Does a real man fix cars?” “He can if he wants to. But if not, he can always pay someone else to do it.” I had my closure.

So later that week, I found that student and told her what my Dad told me. She sat there with this smug look on her face. Then she tells me, “Real men like hugs.” So what if they do. It’s not as if they can’t live without hugs. I walked away in a confused fury. I then ran into the student’s ex-boyfriend. He looks at me and says, “Real men don’t need hugs, real women do. Real men just respect that.” I mean I still wasn’t sure what was going on, but at that point I didn’t really have the energy. It was good enough for me. So, until we meet again, that, my friends, is that.