Vacation. A word so sweet your triglycerides rose to the level of Jabba the Hutt’s just by reading it. So, please, go to the emergency room-now.Yeah, vacation is sweet, and I had five days of it. Five no-shavin’, no-workin’, no-thinkin’ days of lethargy and naps. I sat on the couch that Monday morning, a cup of coffee in my hand, when my lazy vacation turned into one of those vacations you see in movies where everyone’s ankles are chained together and they’re busting rocks in front of a guy holding a shotgun.

“Bye, honey,” my wife said as she did a strafing run through the living room on her way to work, pulling the front door shut behind her so quickly I barely heard the words that would doom my vacation much like “I’ll have to raise taxes” doomed Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign … by the way, he lost. “Have a great day. There’s a list on the kitchen table. I love you.”

Slam. Tap, tap, tap. Click. Vroom. Slam. Zip. … And she was gone.

Sure, I’ll have a great day. A great day of reruns, frozen pizza and … a list? A list? I’m on vacation and I have a list?

There are very few lists that can bring fear into the soul of someone who was planning to have a couple of beers during “Gilligan’s Island” that afternoon. The Shopping List (not “a” shopping list, The Shopping List. The one where your wife asks you to buy blush, Secret, a Tori Amos CD, Tampons, and an Audrey Hepburn movie), Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s list of communist sympathizers, and the Mob’s hit list are nothing compared to a “To Do” list your wife makes and drops on your head the first day of vacation.

I looked at the table. A piece of paper was propped against the saltshaker. As I approached it, I could tell the message wasn’t going to be good-she’d used red ink.

Jason’s To-Do List By FRIDAY.

Great, I love deadlines, especially those written with letters shaped like little daggers.

1. Power wash the house.
2. Patch the sidewalk.
3. Wash the carpets.
4. Move the heaviest thing we own to the basement.
5. Move the second heaviest thing we own from the basement.
6. Listen to all my albums you hate.
7. Mow the lawn … preferably with toenail clippers.
8. Write a treatise on the eternal struggle between good and evil as seen through the eyes of Hannah Montana.
9. Pave the driveway.
10. Pull the Earth’s orbit closer to the Sun. We’re having the Smiths over for a barbecue this weekend and I’d like the weather to be nice.

Wow, I’d do less work at work.

Guys, we need to take back our vacations, and by that I mean our own manliness. Our days of earned sloth should not be wasted repairing the house, performing preventative automotive maintenance, or thinking. We’re men, and we’ll get to whatever right after the ballgame.

Therefore, I propose my own list-The Guy’s List. A list of everything a guy needs, wants, and deserves just because when everything was fresh and new in this world, we killed cave bears. And why did we kill cave bears? For warmth, shelter, and food so our species could continue, but mainly because killing something 1,000 pounds heavier than you with a pointed stick really turns chicks on.

So, here it is, The Guy List. If there’s anything I missed, consult No. 4.

The Guy List
1. I’m a man. I do man things like hang out in the garage for no apparent reason, belch then describe how it tastes, pee in the yard, and reminisce about things that embarrass my wife.
2. Think assembly instructions are for the weak.
3. It’s my right as a man to scream, curse, and break things if the right fielder throws to the wrong cutoff man. Ladies, if you’re not sports fans you don’t have to understand a man’s anger, worry about it, or even acknowledge it. Just remember, to a guy a miscue in sports is EXACTLY the same as a life-threatening situation involving his own children or at least a puppy. Just agree with your man, offer beer, and he’ll be fine.
4. I’m never wrong. Deal with it.
5. A racy “Desperate Housewives”-where hot 40-something chicks somehow never make out with each other-is on at the same time as “The Terminator.” Which do you think I want to watch?
6. If science gives us the chance, every guy in the country will go back in time just to date his high-school Spanish teacher.
7. Everyone’s taste in music but mine sucks.
8. Hugh Hefner is a god. The dude’s at least 402 years old and still has blondes dripping off him like sweat. And Hef cares. He cares enough about his fellow men to peddle soft-core smut at reasonable prices. Thank you, Mr. Hugh Hefner. Thank you.
9. Professions that require axes (park rangers, lumberjacks, firemen, and that dwarf from “The Lord of the Rings”), swords (pirates, cavalrymen, and ninjas) and big pointed sticks to kill cave bears (Ringo Starr) are a hell of a lot cooler than marketing majors.
10. Saturday, translated from Old English, literally means sit on your ass day. So go, my friends, and do.

There. I feel better. We should all live by the Word of Guyness. I’ll work on that next week after I figure out how to pull the Earth out of its orbit.

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Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to the Show-Me State’s Most Spirited Spots,” is available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com or tsup.truman.edu. Visit Jason’s Web site, www.jasonoffutt.com, for his other books.