Great advice for men who love sports

Rob Neal’s new book, We Kill The Spiders, is both humorous and insightful. Best of all, Rob’s advice to men is right on the mark. Pay attention guys!

Published by Maine Publishers Allliance, which does a great job helping authors publish their books, Rob’s first book is a keeper.

Promoted as “Ten Jobs for Men Who Love Women and Sports” the book relates Rob’s experiences as a fanatical sports fan. I’ll tell you right now, his wife must be a saint.

“Really, we do think first about our families, it just might not look that way with some type of sports event always on the TV,” writes Rob. “We’re actually multi-tasking wizards. We can be having an intimate and meaningful conversation with our wife while keeping one eye on the game and the cold beer. She might think this means she’s not a high priority. Go figure.”

Go figure, indeed. I related to Rob’s first recommendation to Kill the Spiders. My wife Linda is ok with spiders, but she is deathly afraid of snakes. In my book, A Life Lived Outdoors, there’s a chapter about the wild critters that got into our house.

I left a waste basket outdoors overnight, but brought it into the kitchen before heading somewhere for a meeting. A short time later, as Linda was in the kitchen, a snake crawled out of the basket. Yikes! Standing in a chair, Linda clubbed the thing to death with the fireplace shovel. Hours later when I arrived home, she was still shook up.

Rob’s spider story is also a good one. He was called upstairs by a screaming wife, to kill a tiny spider on their bed, and missed the final game-winning play by the Patriots.

His chapter titled “Be the Dad” is especially good, and I definitely related to the chapter “Housework: just show up and shut up.”

“This simple book of humor and advice describes the ten most important jobs for men who want to live happily with women. By doing these jobs well, our relationships with women will be all that we want, and we will be able to watch or play sports we want,” writes Rob.

No surprise, Rob got lots of help as he wrote this book from his wife Kym, a “total and complete non-sports person” and his daughter Skyler.

This book would be a great Christmas gift for any husband or boyfriend. Just saying.

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.