I have to prove my manhood n/t

[UTUSN]

22. Actually,

When I was 10 or so, I had empathy for my mother every day as she ironed my father's white shirt before breakfast and before her getting herself ready to go to work (they worked at the same place), and I asked her to show me how to iron my own shirts, which I do to this day. Then in the Navy, there was something called a ditty bag that included a sewing kit for buttons and such, and I've sewn military patches on uniform shirts and caps, badly, and for looks have them redone by dry cleaning tailors just because of the professional looks of the job. I was a mean square dancer in elementary school and, frankly, have spent the past ten months recuperating from a fractured fibula over a stomping type of dance. I'll cop to cooking, having interviewed my mother for our family recipes before it was too late, and I can fire them up as tasty as my mother's. Baking, I'll sort of pass on, although I can follow a recipe's instructions. Knitting, I'll definitely pass on, although it sounds therapeutic, something I could use (the therapeutic part).

Actually, my father was a good man, but he was orphaned at 13 and his older brothers weren't very fatherly, so he didn't know what or how to teach me stuff. Actually, my mother tried with some of that besides her own stuff. The Navy did the rest. Since then I've made it a practice to chat people up, interview them about their skills, and get tips. I still don't feel cool, always striving after all the stuff I don't know.