(and i probably do blog about every single second of my life, thats what happens when you are camped in front of a computer all day with only your own brain and two dogs for company. things tend to get a little whacko).
so, i am given instructions by He Who Must Be Obeyed (no not voldemort, i am talking about the Owner of The Car) to take the car to this mechanic guy we used to see when we lived here before. some back story: it was suggested to me that i should take the recent insurance jobs on the car to this said mechanic guy but the insurance company had recommended some other place, and, (at the risk of adding reinforcements to that patriarchy i have been so angry with lately), being a girl, i was only dimly aware that you can take your car to any repairer for insurance work these days. (call me silly, but i tend not to keep information like that at the front of my brain). but i didnt follow that advice because the name of that mechanic had changed and i thought, hmm maybe its not the same guy, and i should just do what the insurance company tells me. (yes yes i know). so the insurance work gets done Somewhere Else.
but this morning, i take the car and its little scratch (heres a picture):
off to the Mechanic-we-used-to-see-but-whose-workshop-has-a-new-name. it is of course, The Same Guy. he remembers me (he would, we um, sent him a lot of business when we used to live here before). he looks at the car, shakes his head at me, says he can fix it but not on rainy day and offers to fix it for free. no kidding. (no i am not telling you who he is, he'll kill me). i express my surprise and gratitude and he says 'just dont take your car to Somewhere Else in future'. i act like a girl and say 'oh i thought i had to take it to where the insurance company tells me, cos i would have bought it here if i thought i could' and he says 'no they passed a law about that' and then some distant bell goes off in the back of my brain somewhere and i feel like a complete idiot. like surely the biggest idiot ever born. i hang my head in shame and promise to sign away my first born if it would help.
i also take back every bad thing i ever said about a mechanic.
but thats not what this post is about (although it is nice to know there are some really decent human beings out there).
i ring He Who Must Be Obeyed with this good news, and he proceeds to tell me how he TOLD me i should have taken the car to Nice Mechanic for the insurance work and how now he feels really guilty (as do i) and he KNEW we should have taken it there and i just sit there and pout.
one, he ruined my good news. ok, i did the wrong thing before but i did the right thing today and i covered his arse with my own stupidity. he should be HAPPY.
but no.
two, being a male, he must tell me how he told me to do it a certain way before but i didnt and thus forgets that i am the one who has to run around and tend to these things so i just do the best i can but he still has to find fault with it.
this is the rule. if you dont take care of it yourself you CAN NOT criticise the person who does take care of it. if you are also wrong about something, or contributory in some way, ie, you didnt INSIST that it be taken to the Nice Mechanic by explaining clearly the new laws allowing these things, then its also at least partly your fault, no?
for example, this last weekend, i rang He Must Be Obeyed and asked him to bring a second pair of jeans to Sydney with him when he came because i had forgotten to do so. he did of course, bring the wrong pair. i got upset with him (not really, just one of those pretend-upsets when men do pretty much what you expect them to do).
but you know what, it was wrong of me to get upset with him at all. it was my fault for not packing enough clothes. have i not known him long enough to know he wouldnt know the difference between two pairs of my blue jeans if they reached out and slapped him?
i was bad. i was wrong. i am sorry.
the point is, why are inter-sex communications so difficult? is it really the case that men are from mars? because i swear to god somedays i dont know what goes on in their little brains. i quite like them as a species generally, and dont subscribe to the belief that they are all basically simpletons who need just to be fed to be happy, but i do wonder what language they speak and whose idea of a joke was it to make our ways of processing information and feelings so entirely different?
anyway, now i am home and have plenty of time to pensky file after all so all is not lost. and i hereby promise not to blog every single thought or feeling i have for at least a week.
k xx
4 comments:
Its a bloody "panel beater" not a mechanic!
well, I wouldn't apologise over the jeans incident if I were you. I was standing next to you when you described them over the phone. Perfectly detailed description, couldn't mistake them for those ones he brought instead.
Then, I witnessed your 'pretend upset!' and when you wandered off to change he says to me 'all I heard was elastic!' One word out of about twenty describing the jeans and he remembers the one that you specifically said the jeans did not have.
Martians!!
At the risk of becoming a pin cushion, i must say you have a training issue. No two training issues, one your reversing skills and two you have failed to train your other half!
indeed there are multiple uses for the sharp steel 2.25 mm double pointed knitting needle dave.
see you this arvo :)
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