I've always wondered why cars are such a fetish for men, while for us women they're simply a means of transport. Below I describe 3 situations, all based on real events, that illustrate the difference in the two sexes' attitude to cars:
1.The nightmare called the MOT
The second half of August is always a special time for me. The last days of my favourite season slip through my fingers. The days are still warm and long. It makes me happy to think there's even time for one more quick trip to the seaside. The only thing that clouds this otherwise wonderful time of year for me is the fact that the end of August is once again the time to take my Hyundai for its MOT.
What's the big deal about taking your car for its MOT, you'll ask? To the male half of humanity my fear is irrational and incomprehensible. You go for half an hour, drive your car so it squats over a big pit dug into the garage floor, and follow the instructions you're given.
The problems, for me at least, are two. The first, completely irrational, I admit, has to do with the hellish abyss gaping in the middle of the garage floor, over which I have to park my car so precisely that the two of us don't get swallowed up by its insatiable maw. Bathed in cold sweat, with the staff assuring me that no one has ever managed to fall into the hole, I manage to straddle the abyss – which at the garage they call "the pit" – and plant my 4 tyres on its edges. A garage employee stands right in front of my car with commands along the lines of "rev it up to 4000", and I fight the gut feeling that when I press the accelerator, I'll accidentally lunge forward and run him over.
The second and bigger problem is that I'm not quite sure how exactly to carry out the commands the garage employee gives me (assuming he escapes being run over). The year before last, for example, I was reduced to utter helplessness when he told me to put on the "brake lights" so he could see whether they worked. In a panic I started pressing random buttons on the dashboard, and that way I managed to show him that my rear window heater works. From this man I learned that the brake lights come on when I press the brake. I suppose he was well disposed towards me because I was wearing skin-tight trousers and high heels.
Armed with this memory, last year I stormed the MOT garage with the heavy artillery. The night before, I couldn't sleep for worrying about the MOT ahead of me. I wondered whether to put on a short skirt or a plunging neckline to win the inspector's sympathy. To be on the safe side, I settled on the combination of a short skirt with a plunging neckline.
The next day the inspection went roughly like this:
The inspector asks me for a whole pile of documents, from which it turns out I'm missing the slip from last year's MOT. I start fussing and fretting about where on earth it could be. Had I checked the glovebox, he sighs. I pull all sorts of junk out of the glovebox, including an old paper map of Bulgaria of the kind I swear I have never bought in my life. Digging through the heap of papers, the man, to my utter amazement, finds what he needs.
Next comes the ordeal of parking over the hole, to the encouraging cheers of all the garage staff. I manage that too.
We start on the orders: "put the brake lights on", "pull the handbrake" and so on. I handle everything brilliantly, until I hear: "Right, now put your FULL BEAM ON!"
I'd like to point out that if I drove out of town at night, I'd know how to put the full beam on. After all, I've been driving for 12 years. But since I haven't driven on the motorway at night, my knowledge of full beam is a little mouldy.
"Would you like me to put the dipped headlights on first?" I instinctively try to buy time, even though it's perfectly clear to me that here not even Time, that Great Teacher, is going to help.
"Put them on as well, yeah."
I put the dipped lights on. But this knowledge of mine isn't impressive enough to release me from demonstrating the full beam. I have some vague memory that the full beam is switched on from the same stalk as the dipped lights, you just twist a little ring at the end of the stalk. I twist it.
"Not the fog lights, girl. I want to see the full beam."
Stay calm, Niyka, I repeat to myself – so far everything's going fine. Panic is a bad adviser. Maintaining a semblance of calm, I examine the stalks around my steering wheel. On one side is the stalk for the dipped lights and, as I've just recalled, the fog lights. On the other side was the one for the indicators. I saw a ring at its end too. I twisted it.
My windscreen was drenched in a jet of washer fluid.
******************************************************************
2.Spot the 5 differences.
As a child I loved those fun time-killing puzzles where we had to find the 5 differences between two pictures that look identical at first glance. I was very good at spotting the differences, but just recently I discovered that I've lost this gift of mine:
Emil (my husband) makes me go downstairs to get something from his car.
I wouldn't need a key, he'd go out onto the balcony and unlock it for me with the remote from there.
I go down, stand dutifully by the car and wait for him to unlock it….I wait, and wait… nothing.
I write to him on Viber: "Come on, please, if you're going to send me running back and forth, at LEAST unlock the car for me."
His laconic reply is: "Where are you?"
This man has the memory of a goldfish – he doesn't even remember that two minutes ago he sent me to the car.
"I'm where you sent me – in front of the bl*§dy car!!! Where are YOU?" I look up – he's not on the balcony.
Him: "I'm on the balcony."
Me: "NO, YOU'RE NOT!"
Him: "I'm on the balcony, you're not by the car!"
Me: "I'm by the car, you're not on the balcony!"
I send him a photo of the empty balcony. "There," I say, "see, you're not on the balcony."
"I'm on the other balcony, Niyo!"
I go round the corner of the building, where our other balcony is.
"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME, GIRL?" Emo is hanging indignantly halfway off the balcony.
"By the car, where you ordered me to go, and then you didn't even unlock it for me!"
"How could you have been by the car, when it's right in front of you?"
Suddenly the car somehow materialises next to me, under the other balcony.
I go back round the corner to cross-check – the wretched thing has now gone back there again. I feel like this car is mocking me. Still, it occurs to me to check the number plate of the "first" car, and I establish that it's unfamiliar to me. I go back to look at the plate of the "second" car – that one I've seen before. So this is our car.
Emil is scandalised by the fact that I've survived without basic life skills, such as telling a Mazda CX5 2.2 175 hp from a Mitsubishi Outlander 2.0 136 hp. That these two cars were like night and day.
What night and what day, Emil? Day is white, night is black, and here we're talking about two big GREY cars.
Anyway, I'd been hanging around in front of our neighbour Elena's car.
*******************************************************************************
3 . Assorted observations on the subject:
1.I've never met a man in whose head, when he sees a woman driver starting to manoeuvre into a parking space, the Little-Light-of-Chivalry doesn't switch on.
Otherwise, if they see her pregnant on the underground, lugging two bags of shopping – there the chance of them being gentlemen and giving up their seat is 50/50. BUT the moment they see her parking…..everything that goes by the name of "man" within a 300-metre radius of a parking woman drops whatever it's doing, such as putting up buildings, mixing concrete or picking its nose, and rushes over to help with the expert advice: "FULL LOCK RIGHT".
2. When they try to explain to you who someone is, they always describe him by his car. For example: "Oh, come on, you know Zhoro from our block – he's the neighbour with the White Astra."
3.Every two years it is ABSOLUTELY VITAL for him to buy a new car. For no other reason than age-old traditional values such as "the safety of his family". Because he cannot make COMPROMISES on the SAFETY of his own children by driving them around in a car that's a whole 2 years old.
The observations above have equivalent observations about the fair sex's attitude to cars (linked to the points above):
1.Our brain completely freezes when we hear "FULL LOCK RIGHT", and that's why we invariably carry out this command by doing "FULL LOCK LEFT".
2.For us, an "Aster" is a garden flower. When we hear that Zhoro is the neighbour with the white aster, we picture a handsome, smiling gardener who, hot from working in his garden, has taken his shirt off. Sweat trickles down his perfect six-pack as he hands us a white flower. We start wondering why we've never bumped into Zhoro in this stupid, boring block.
3.We drive a car that's 10+ years old, even though our children beg us on their knees to buy a new one, because they're embarrassed for their friends to see their mum loading them into the "old banger" again. The money for a new car we save for beauty treatments – Zhoro-With-The-White-Aster does live in our block, after all.
***********************************************************************************************
4.To finish: I may be guilty of my car being scuffed, or of not knowing the neighbours' cars. But regardless of everything going on around me, I always, always, always use my indicators and always, always, always stop at zebra crossings.
What's more, since I'm not going to pay for parking sensors on my car, I park without the help of this priceless adviser. Unlike Emo, who, like any self-respecting man, parks with the help of a screen with projections, sound effects, warnings and flashing diagrams of everything around the car.
Our sons' conclusion: Mum is a much better driver than Dad, because she can park on her own!
As they say: I rest my case! After all, children always know best!
