I am a male. To take my 28 years of existence and all the things in which I've accomplished and still hope to and lump it into one single category, I would most definitively say that yes, I am a male.
To subcategorize the male distinction, I would further break down the male gender into three separate types: men, boys and that group that sits in the middle that can neither be called a man or a boy - me.
Men are the ones who can go out, build things, work with their hands, know why the car is smoking and leaking a strange turquoise liquid that you are certain was not put into the engine by you, and can hunt, skin and prepare their own food without the use of a debit card.
I am not one of these.
I have no idea how to build anything and had it not been for the instructions to my Legos sets as a kid, those silly things would have never made it to their final stage.
I certainly don't work with my hands outside of the ability to tap keys in a logical order to make words and if I was left to get my own food through means such as hunting, I would certainly starve.
It is also a safe bet to say that I am not a boy, either.
I used to be a boy but as time has marched on, I have lost most of my boyish traits. Boys are young, eager and naive about many things.
They are typically school-aged, still learning at a rate that would cause my head to explode these days, and have enough energy to wake up, go to school, participate in band, sports, theater and church youth group before heading home, doing three hours of homework, eating an entire large pizza and parts of the box, and then talking on the phone for another two hours before falling asleep to start over the next day.
No, I'm a part of that ''other'' group, which is the largest subcategory of the ''male'' genre.
We are the ones who are capable of such tasks as sitting at desks, adding numbers, sometimes very large complex numbers, staring at computer screens and depending often on ''men'' to fix the things that we cannot.
To put it in simpler form, men watch mixed martial arts fighting, boys watch WWE wrestling, and the rest of us, well, we watch whatever is on the television because the remote got swallowed by the couch for the millionth time and we refuse to go fishing for it ever again!
This is not to say that men don't enjoy the WWE or that the ''others'' don't enjoy one or the other, but I'm not being literal here. It's hyperbole.
So what? The nerd behind the computer decided to dissect the male gender in three easy-to-understand groups filled with stereotypical jokes about fixing and building and watching wrestling.
Yes, I did.
Over the course of the next few columns, I want to discuss and help unveil some of the secrets of the male species that you and maybe even I did not already know.
I want to help answer some of the great questions that have plagued women and other men alike as to why we act and do some of the things that we do, even though there are a few things that I just can't explain.
Why do I find it so hilariously funny when a close friend, someone for whom I care deeply, falls and injures himself to the point it requires medical attention? This is certainly not something that I would find funny if, say, my wife were to do it.
What is it about the baseball season that makes me so happy and exciting at the beginning, bores me to death in the middle and ends with me wanting to join Hair Club for Men just so that I can grow some hair simply to pull it out in disgust? I don't know.
What I do know is that we as a living breathing subcategory of the human species, we males are far more complex and deep than most people want to realize.
We find things beautiful, but not things such as flowers and window treatments. A Saturday afternoon when the sun is shining brightly over a perfectly cut and maintained baseball field, the grass a perfect green and the smell of cheap stadium beer and hot dogs wafting through the air - that's a beautiful thing.
I will see you all again in a couple weeks when we can delve further into the reason why males can fall in love deeper and faster with a good pair of jeans than any of the women they have ever dated.