Women’s love-hate relationship with cars

                                  Photo: Courtesy

The relationship between women and cars is a strange one. When they are dating a man, the car is almost a deal breaker if you do not have it. Yet when the woman is now comfortably in the house, she wants to know nothing more about the car.

There was this girl who was dating my roommate in college. The on and off dating stretched the entire lifespan of our college stay and many were expecting that as soon as joblessness has divorced them, they would settle down.

But the girl in question suddenly developed an appetite for keys. No, not for her mother’s gate or the store.

But car keys. Instead of the cheap coffee that they occasionally took after weeks of saving on bus fare with her college bosom friend, she started developing exotic tastes for high end coffee houses.

Soon, it emerged that she had enrolled in a driving school. When my pal told me that, I was surprised. He, too, was getting concerned. “Shouldn’t she be looking for a job instead of going to driving school?” I asked.

The man was at a loss. I told him that as his best friend, my place in history was to be brutally honest with him.

I told him to ‘make hay while the sun shined’, for that girl was slipping away. Like a moth to the light, the girl was attracted to the cars. Interestingly, most cases have similar scripts.

But what is astonishing is that as soon as the woman is assured of her place in the man’s house, even that car ceases to be important. Few women take interest in matters automobile. That is why when they go to a garage; the garage owner knows it is harvest time.

Flat tyre

They will touch one wire and fidget with another and slap the clueless woman with a gargantuan bill. Even on the roads, you will see five women pop out of a red Vitz and stare at a flat tyre as if it is a detonator. None of them will have the clue on what needs to be done.

Do not be surprised if you get a call from one of your female colleagues and they go alike ‘Honey, one of the tyres is straight at the bottom but is round and okay on the other area’.

There was this girl who wanted to flout her new acquisition to her chama mates. So when it was decided that the next chama meeting will be at Ole Polos on Magadi Road the girl was elated, she finally knew that she would show off her new red toy in an out of town road trip.

Know your car

On the material day, she set off to Ole Polos. Just past Kiserian, her fuel light came on. Of course it was orange. That did not scare her. She had been told by her boyfriend that as long as the light is not red on the dash board, it is not something very urgent. So off she continued driving and told herself that she will refuel when the fuel light turned red, just as the traffic lights.

Of course, the fuel gauge does not turn red. After many kilometres of driving, her new car coughed after the last drop in the tank was exhausted. Women, please get to know your cars, invest the same deal and interests that you have when sniffing your man’s shirts for foreign cologne.