The testosterone equation

There are times I wish I was a man:

When there isn’t a rest stop in sight and I need to pee.

When I want to put my fist in someone’s face.

When I need to take my car to the mechanic.

When… oh hell, that’s about it.

There are times when I grateful beyond measure that I am a woman (hear me roar!). 

Testosterone must be a terrible challenge to live with. Outnumbered by men in my home I am starting to accept that living with testosterone is a biological hazard. 

Once that man switch gets flicked there is nothing a woman can do but sit back and watch the situation unfold.

Picture this…

Lightning splits the sky. 

A curtain of rain falls to earth. 

Men scramble through the mud to the safety of their cars. 

Simultaneously they all edge towards the exit. 

The switch is flicked. 

It is not about getting home anymore. 

It is war. 

It is about being first – no matter what. 

The field on which they parked now turned into an ancient battlefield where man takes on man in a primordial battle for supremacy. 

It is every man for himself. 

Women and children sit mute as their alpha males enter the fray.

It was about now that my husband decided that he would rather die than let the Toyota Landcruiser take the forward position. 

Me: “Darling. He’s already driven over two traffic cones. I don’t think he is in a very good mood. Perhaps we should allow him to go first?”

Him: “No! I refuse. I was here first and I’ll be damned if I let him in.”

I shut up, regarding it as the most prudent course of action. About, oh, 30 seconds later the Landcruiser driver rammed into the back of our compact little Ford. Then he reversed and rammed us again. I started to pray.

Husband: “I’m getting out.”

Me in tones of pure ice: “No, you are not. I told you he was not in a good mood. I have his registration. Just let it go.”

Husband opening door: “I’m going to take his picture!”

Me: “By all means, if getting a fist in your face is how you’d like this evening to end. And once we are home, I’ll knee you in the balls for being a stupid idiot. Let. It. Go.”

Did I mention my mother was in the car? No? Well she was. Awkward much? We tried, we really did, not to take the piss. We failed.

Halfway home, my husband is ready to turn the car around and scour the streets for the Toyota driving maniac. By now he has convinced himself that he has let himself down as a man. A real man would have got out of the car and indulged in a bit of old fashioned mud wrestling. 

That was three days ago. Each morning at the school he eyes each Toyota Landcruiser with an Attila the Hun type of gleam in his eye.

Him: “Is that it? Was that him?”

Me: “No.”

Silence

Me: “What are you doing to do if you find him exactly?”

Him: “I’ll key his bloody car, that’s what I’ll do.”

Me: “Wasn’t it you who once told me that two wrongs don’t make a right?”

Him: “It’s not about bloody right and wrong. It’s about satisfaction. God! Don’t you understand men at all?”

Apparently not.

The Funny Girl and La Bella Donna

The relationship between man and his car is a complex and multi-faceted thing of beauty. I say man in a totally non-gender specific way, because God knows I love my car, but not in a creepy auto-erotica kind of way.

Someone got me thinking about cars and what they mean this weekend. Mine have occupied a strange mechanical shaped space in my heart. My first car belonged to my Grandpa. It was his pride and joy. No-one, but no-one drove it but him. He was so obsessive about this that he went with his car when it was serviced and stayed throughout the proceedings like an over-protective parent. Upon his death I painted it British racing green, put fur on her dashboard and embraced the road like a long lost lover. I am sure he did more than roll over in his grave. He probably stood straight up and roared.

She had no brakes, no radio (I had a portable tape player under the passenger seat), no air conditioning and certainly no power steering. She was the very essence of freedom and the keys to the city. The AA came to my home most days to start her up and in the afternoons I prowled the varsity parking lot with my jumper cables looking for some hapless first year to get her going again. I never went anywhere without those cables or a 2 litre bottle of water to refill the radiator. Once caught without it, a passing motorist kindly gave me her bottle of Evian.

Eventually I had to concede that I lacked the mechanical knowledge to keep her on the road. This coincided with my Grandmother passing away and my father telling me in no uncertain terms that it was time to get a car that might just on the off-chance pass roadworthy. We went together to the Ford dealership and I spent my inheritance on Funny Girl, named for her number plate FNY. She was a red Ford Fiesta with air conditioning and, oh glory, a cassette and radio built-in! My happiness knew no bounds.

She has served me well for many years, but with three children a two-seater car is not an option and I was sick of listening to old mix tapes. Sadly things came to a head last year in a head on collision that has rendered her into a heap of scrap metal in my back garden. I can’t bear to part with her. She may be unsalvageable, but her spirit will live on in my husband’s Triumph Herald.

She must have known my heart belonged to another. For shortly before the accident I had fallen head over heels in love with La Bella Donna. She is a 1976 3 litre VW Kombi. She’s been repainted, reupholstered and kitted with a sound system that can blast your head off at 20 paces. She has no power steering and no air-conditioning, but she is beautiful. Everyone smiles when I drive past. Arbitrary strangers try to buy her from me for ridiculous amounts of money.

She and I are the same age. This means we are slow to get going in the morning. We are a little creaky around the joints. We go a little slower these days. We can be a little cranky. We do not like to be rushed. We need a lot of tender loving care.

Sadly La Bella Donna is currently going nowhere slowly. Her compression is out and her steering column in shot. She is, like the best women, an artwork in progress. My father regards her as my folly. Then again his first car was the first Mini Cooper and his folly a 1960s Morgan. My older son regards both Bella and me with ill-concealed embarrassment amid the Z5s and SLKs in his parking lot at school. My younger two think she is marvellous.

Why did I fall so on love with her? Well, let me count the ways...

The most important is that she is a symbol of my childhood, my dreams for the future and the naiveté of youth in a design icon of her era. She is instantly recognisable on the road. People wave at me on the school run and daily commute like we are old friends. She doesn’t look like any other car smooched out of a sausage factory production line. She stands out, proud of her heritage, her age and her aging mutant hippiedom. She is a symbol of simpler days, simpler times and maybe happier ones.

Also, she is one of the few cars this week with petrol in her, because she doesn’t use this new fangled unleaded stuff, she’s an LRP girl all the way.

Oh yeah, and she paid back her carbon footprint in 1983. Boo sucks to you Prius.