A man's got to know his limitations. I have many.

The list of subjects about which I can confidently say "Oh, I know a lot about that" is exceedingly small.

This comes as no surprise to my friends and family. They'll tell you my knowledge tends to be extremely focused and not altogether useful.

Which I suppose would be OK if I hadn't spent the past 50+ years expecting that at some point, through some unknown process, I would come to understand a wide range of things.

But it hasn't happened. I have very little wisdom and even less common sense. I continue to be mystified by how appliances in my own house work, for example.

It also bothers me that I write every day for both personal and professional reasons, yet I'm not confident I can fully explain the proper use of a comma.

And a semicolon? Forget it.

I am, in short, stunningly ignorant on most topics.

This is one reason I have very few opinions, especially when it comes to politics. Someone will explain their point of view to me on an issue and I'll say, "Well, that sounds right to me." Then another person with an opposing viewpoint will explain their perspective and I'll say, "You know, that sounds right, too."

Maybe I just don't understand the nature of opinions. I'm looking for 100% black-and-white clarity when instead I should be looking for the perspective that seems to carry at least a little more weight. You can, I guess, acknowledge that a person brings up some valid points and still overall disagree with them.

Now, I don't want you to think I'm entirely useless as a human being. There are subjects on which I'm a pretty reliable source. Or at least you could do a lot worse than me if you have questions.

Here is the complete list of those subjects:

• The Australian band Men at Work's full discography and song lyrics
• The 1979 Cleveland Indians
• World War I battles on the Western Front, 1917-18
• Oatmeal: Is it just for breakfast? (THE EXTENT OF MY KNOWLEDGE HERE: "No.")
• Rolling a 300 game in Wii Sports Bowling
• Ottawa Senators goaltenders, 1992-present
• Choosing the correct container size when cleaning up after dinner and storing leftovers

And that's probably about it.

Oh, I'm also pretty good when it comes to Flintstones trivia. Call me the next time someone asks you what Barney Rubble did for a living.

Ranking the best cartoons of all time

One of my favorite blog posts I've written was one I did last year on the best breakfast cereals ever produced. I love cereal, which is why I enjoyed putting that one together.

I also love cartoons. I grew up on them and I still watch them when I get a chance. And I'm not necessarily talking about the adult-oriented modern ones like The Simpsons or Family Guy, though the writing on both shows is occasionally brilliant.

No, I'm talking about the stuff people of my generation and older used to watch on Saturday mornings. Or weekdays after school. I'm talking about the classics, my friends.

There are many old-time cartoons worthy of inclusion on this list, but here are the five that I would put at the very top. You may, of course, disagree. And you may, of course, be wrong.

Anyway, here we go:

#5 - The Jetsons
I struggled mightily choosing between The Jetsons and Tom & Jerry. Both are great, but I've always been a slightly bigger fan of George Jetson and his space-age family. For one thing, the theme song rocked. For another, The Jetsons had Astro the talking dog, whose approach to the English language was a precursor to Scooby Doo. Speaking of which...

#4 - Scooby Doo
All you need to know about Scooby Doo comes from Norm Macdonald playing the part of Burt Reynolds in Saturday Night Live's "Celebrity Jeopardy": "That was a funny dog, Scooby Doo. Rode around in a van and solved mysteries." That he did. Except he didn't. Fred, Velma and Daphne pretty much solved the mysteries, while Scooby and Shaggy walked around in fear of ghosts and looking for food. There are also intimations (played up in the 2002 movie version of the cartoon) that Scooby and Shaggy would partake of certain illegal organic substances. I can believe that.

#3 - Popeye
It's nearly impossible to expose your kids to the wonders of Popeye nowadays. I just can't find it anywhere (though there's probably a 24-hour Popeye Network in the upper reaches of our digital cable offerings, like somewhere around Channel 7,000). Popeye is outstanding. Not so much the individual plotlines, which almost always involved Popeye having to win over Olive Oyl from Bluto/Brutus. The hilariousness of Popeye comes in the stuff he says under his breath. Popeye can make me laugh so hard I'll cry.

#2 - Looney Toons/Merrie Melodies
Most people just call these cartoon shorts "Bugs Bunny" because he's the character most associated with them. But my favorite episode − by far − stars Daffy Duck. If you are capable of watching Daffy as Robin Hood and not at least chuckling a few times, then I'm not sure you and I are from the same planet. Outstanding writing, outstanding animation. I hear that Looney Toons theme song and I'm immediately transported back to the mid- and late 70s, when I would watch a full half hour of these 'toons every morning before school.

#1 - The Flintstones
It does not get any better than the 'Stones, as far as I'm concerned. But I'm actually very particular when it comes to which vintage. I'm talking about the early Flintstones episodes when the characters were drawn a little more clumsily (with thick black outlines) and Mel Blanc gave Barney a deeper, more "dumb guy" voice. That's classic 'Stones right there. I refused to acknowledge most of the episodes from the last season or two of the show, especially once the Great Gazoo came into play. And the one where the two families traveled back in time was just plain weird. No, just give me Fred and Barney driving to work every morning and the boys somehow extricating themselves from a wacky situation and I'm happy.

Friday's random thoughts

(1) My dad used to tell a joke that involved Native American women and, I think, Lewis and Clark for which the punchline was "the Indian-Nipple-Less 500." This is essentially all you need to know about my father's particular brand of humor.

(2) Incidentally, thought #1 is also all you need to know about why I'll probably never write a book. Books require thought, planning and structure. I have ADHD of the computer keyboard and am utterly incapable of spending more than about four sentences on a single thought. And this is the fourth sentence on this particular thought.

(3) Having a college freshman daughter is interesting in many ways, not the least of which is that I feel obliged suddenly to treat her like an adult. Which I should, of course, seeing that she'll be 19 in a couple of days. She comes and goes as she pleases in her own little car. She works a job. She responsibly attends classes and keeps up with her schoolwork. All very adult things. Then I find myself having to instruct her to hand wash  the salad bowl she takes to work because the dishwasher is − fairly obviously, in my eyes − full. And then dry it. And then put it away. And suddenly she seems 8 years old to me again (even though this is something many adults do). And those little moments, which two years ago would have frustrated me, actually make me smile now.

(4) I still don't fold a lot of laundry in our house (consistent with this blog post from last April). I have no real desire to up my folding output, either. But when I do fold a basket of clothes, do you know what the most satisfying thing to fold is? Bras. Really. Just go cup-in-cup and, boom, that baby is ready to be put away! It's a good feeling.

(5) Have we talked about my love for The Flintstones here before? I can't remember. Let me consult Google and see....OK, Google suggests the 'Stones have been mentioned here before, but never actually dwelt upon. I won't dwell upon them now, other than to point out a fairly consistent injustice that always bothered me. Remember those times when Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty would go out for a little night on the town? They did it more than once. And whenever they did, the boys would change out of their daily caveman outfits and put on tuxes and tails. I thought they looked nice. And what would the wives do to get ready to go out? Put on earrings. Really, that was it. They just put on earrings. Same dresses as normal, same hairdos. Just a pair of dangly earrings and nothing else. C'mon, Wilma and Betty! At least try a little.

Who's better at four random activities: Me or my wife?

Activity #1: Putting up a tent
I used to sleep over my friend Todd Donnelly's house quite a bit. In the summer, we would sleep in a tent in his backyard. I always felt much better when I arrived at Todd's house and the tent was already up. Otherwise I would have to help him put it together, and I'm terrible at that kind of thing. Todd was very good at it. So is my wife. Terry and her family all seem to possess the skills necessary for wilderness survival, so tent construction is nothing to them.

Don't get me wrong: If given some canvas and ropes and a set of instructions, I could eventually mold the pieces into some tent-related shape. I mean, it's not like I would fail completely. But it would take a long time. Like hours, maybe. Terry, on the other hand, instinctively knows that Pole A slides into Tab B and is secured by Line C to Stake D. She just knows, and thus tent assembly is a breeze when she's there. Terry will have a tent up and will be crawling into her sleeping bag by the time I figure out how to remove all the parts from the storage bag.
ADVANTAGE: Terry

Activity #2:Killing spiders
I grew up watching old cartoons that perpetuated hilarious stereotypes. As it turns out, some of those stereotypes are actually true. One is that women are afraid of insects and small woodland creatures. In my experience, yeah, that's pretty well dead on.

My wife and my daughters are strong, confident women. They can do absolutely anything they put their minds to. But plop a daddy longlegs in front of them and they become helpless. This is both hilarious and annoying. I'll be minding my own business in one part of the house when suddenly I hear screams of terror coming from the kitchen. I race down to see what the problem is, and I find a mother and daughter huddled in abject fear while a spider -- MAYBE three-quarters of an inch long -- crawls across the counter.

Never mind that on a straight scale of weight and overall potential to cause harm, these women could destroy the daddy longlegs. They want nothing to do with the arachnid, and it's clearly my job to dispose of it. Now. So I grab a paper towel and crush the spider, and order is restored.

I'll never understand it -- and clearly there are many women for whom spiders are no problem -- but score this one a clear victory for my side.
ADVANTAGE: Me

Activity #3: Parallel parking
As a man, I am expected to be able to parallel park. Most guys can do it well...something to do with spatial thinking and the ability to judge distances or some such. Yeah, well, I must have been sick the day they taught this particular skill in Man Class because I'm not especially good at it.

Again, though, it's like the tent thing: I can do it, just not quickly or in any really skilled way. Terry does it well, and I attribute it to the fact that she learned to drive in a station wagon. And I'm talking about one of those late 70's gunboat-sized station wagons that were 47 feet wide. Her parents' driveway was narrow, and to navigate it you had to squeeze the car between the house on one side and a chain link fence on the other. It was hard enough going forward, almost possible backing up (at least for me).

One time I was backing Terry's 1988 Chevy Beretta out of that driveway. This, you understand, was her pride and joy -- the first car she ever bought and to this day still the only new car she has owned. I had seen her take the station wagon through this tricky little passage a hundred times. How hard, I wondered, could it be in a smaller vehicle?

So for whatever reason, I was backing the Beretta out of the driveway. At some point of the operation, the part of my brain that monitors direction, angles, clearance and all of the other data you need to move a car successfully from Point A to Point B decided to take a little break. I was so worried about hitting the fence on the right side that I forgot about the extremely immovable house on the left.

You can pretty much guess what happened next. As it turns out, those driver's side mirrors tear off the car in surprisingly easy fashion. You'd think they'd reinforce those things.

Anyway, yet again, there's no contest here.
ADVANTAGE: Terry

Activity #4: Building and successfully detonating an atomic bomb
This is a tough one to call. On the one hand, Terry never took chemistry, so I have to think I have the advantage when it comes to figuring out how to harvest and enrich the uranium fuel. But a bomb requires a whole bunch of parts and the knowledge of how they fit together. Terry does jigsaw puzzles really well. I don't.

The cop-out would be to call this one a draw and say something about how we would have to work together. But I'm not going that route. This is a competition, and there has to be a winner and a loser. That's how we roll on this blog.

So assuming we each had to work alone, it comes down to who is more persevering -- the one who's more willing to stick it out. Inevitably, no matter how hard I concentrated, I would be distracted by some shiny object and would eventually wander off to watch an episode of The Flintstones while Terry kept working. In time, I'm sure, she would figure it out and find herself with the power to wipe out all of Wickliffe with the press of a button...assuming a spider didn't come along and chase her away.
ADVANTAGE: Terry (but just barely)


FINAL SCORE: I don't want to talk about it.