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# Apparently, Real Men Don't Use Paragraphs
- URL: https://rough-edges.ghost.io/apparently-real-men-dont-use-paragraphs/
- Published: 2026-09-25T19:29:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-26T06:23:40.000Z
- Description: Well, I'll be damned. Found out this week I'm apparently not a real person. And here I was thinking I was doing a pretty good job of being one. Had a woman wander onto my Facebook page the other day. Sunday morning, I believe it was. I'd posted a…
- Author: Joe Durst
- Tags: Joe's Observations, #blogger-archive, #Import 2026-10-26 03:50

Well, I'll be damned.

Found out this week I'm apparently not a real person.

And here I was thinking I was doing a pretty good job of being one.

Had a woman wander onto my Facebook page the other day. Sunday morning, I believe it was. I'd posted a picture of myself sitting there in my underwear, drinking coffee, enjoying a little peace and quiet.

Nothing unusual around here.

Apparently, she didn't care much for it. Or maybe she cared a little too much. Hell, I don't know.

But instead of scrolling on past, she decided to let me know that I must be fake.

Her evidence?

I write in paragraphs.

Yep. You read that right.

Apparently, the fact that I separate my thoughts when I write something is proof that I'm not a real person.

She said something about how "the rest of US" don't do that.

Now, who in the hell is US?

Is there a club?

Did y'all have a meeting and forget to invite me?

Was there a vote on how many times a man is allowed to hit the Enter key before somebody questions his existence?

Because I missed that shit entirely.

### SO I GOT CURIOUS.

I'll admit it. I clicked on her profile.

Wanted to see who this woman was that had apparently been put in charge of deciding how real people are supposed to write.

And right there in her description, she proudly announced that she's a gun-toting, Bible-thumping, right-wing, anti-feminist truth crusader.

Well, hell.

That's a lot to fit into one sentence.

I don't have a problem with a woman knowing what she believes. More power to her.

But I did get a little tickled thinking about somebody calling themselves a truth crusader while investigating a stranger's paragraph breaks.

Ma'am, it's Facebook.

I ain't running a counterfeit money operation over here.

I'm drinking coffee in my damn underwear.

### BUT HERE'S WHAT'S REALLY GOT ME WONDERING.

Now, some of y'all who've been following me for a while know I've got a line I like to throw out there every now and then.

"You know you wanna sit on my deck."

And I'll be damned if I ain't sitting here wondering whether that was the problem all along.

Maybe she saw the underwear and got offended.

Maybe she saw the underwear and got interested.

Maybe she got interested, got offended that she was interested, and decided to take it out on my punctuation.

I don't know.

I ain't a psychologist.

I'm a contractor.

But I've been around long enough to know there's a mighty fine line between somebody being offended by what they're looking at and somebody looking a little longer than they intended to.

Either way, she stopped scrolling.

Looked at the picture.

Read what I wrote.

And took time out of her Sunday to let me know I wasn't real.

That's a hell of a lot of attention to give a man you don't believe exists.

### I RECKON I OUGHT TO EXPLAIN MYSELF.

I grew up knowing how to read and write.

I know. Shocking.

I work with my hands. I get dirty. I cuss. I've got tools scattered around that I probably ought to put away, and there's usually something on my truck that needs fixing.

But I also know how to put a thought into a sentence.

Sometimes I even have two thoughts.

And when that happens, I start another paragraph.

Didn't realize that made me suspicious.

Hell, I figured it just made things easier to read.

I suppose I could write everything in one big long sentence with no punctuation and no spaces and just keep going until everybody's eyes cross and nobody knows what the hell I'm talking about but apparently that's what real people do now so maybe I'll give it a try sometime.

There.

Feel better?

### AND ANOTHER DAMN THING.

I don't understand why folks have such a hard time believing a man can be more than one thing.

I can build a deck and write a story.

I can spend the day covered in sawdust and still have something worth saying when I get home.

I can joke about my underwear one minute and talk about something that matters to me the next.

I can be a smartass and still give a damn about people.

None of those things cancel each other out.

And I sure as hell don't need to misspell something or forget how punctuation works to prove I'm a regular guy.

If you don't like what I post, that's fine.

If you think I ought to wear more clothes, well, you ain't the first.

If you think I'm full of shit, you're entitled to that opinion too.

But accusing somebody of being fake because they write differently than you do?

That's a new one on me.

### ANYWAY.

I ain't mad at the woman.

Truth be told, she gave me something to write about, so I reckon I ought to thank her.

And I'm sure she'll be pleased to know I wrote the whole damn thing in paragraphs.

Several of 'em.

Even threw in a few headings just to really piss her off.

But before I go, there's one thing I can't quite get out of my head.

She described herself as a Bible-thumping truth crusader.

Now, I ain't here to question anybody's faith.

But somebody might want to tell her that the Bible's got a whole hell of a lot of paragraphs in it.

Chapters, too.

And some of those fellas even wrote in verses.

Guess they weren't real either.

Anyway, y'all have a good day.

I'm gonna finish my coffee.

And if that woman happens to wander back over here, she's welcome to pull up a chair.

Got a perfectly good deck.

— Joe