How car keys make women ‘weak in the knees’

 A couple of years back, I remember many old vehicles had stickers that read "Do not laugh at my car; your daughter could be inside".

That got me thinking why would an artist find it necessary to conjure up such a phrase and turn it to a business opportunity?

It turned out that I was foolishly innocent! In later years as I got to interact more with the girls, I would get to fully appreciate it.

As I would painfully come learn later in life, girls have a sickening and almost lustful infatuation with cars. But not all girls, I suspect mostly those in campus must have carried the tag 'District Focus' like acne on their faces!

There is this pal of mine who had fallen for a girl heads over shoulders. He dated this girl for a couple of years, but when she joined campus there was a marked change in her 'passionometer'. The girl's passionometer, which would rave like a turbo Subaru engine on Isinya road, would hardly register his presence every time he popped in her hostels unannounced.

To see her, the brother was now required to schedule for an appointment to go see her in the Halls of Residence. That was not the big problem. Later when she graduated getting her to agree to a juice date at the man's house was as difficult as scheduling a meeting with the Pope.

As you would expect, like a flower devoid of frequent nourishment, the love withered. We would spend many nights in dingy pubs gazing at the ceiling wondering what could have happened as we helped a brother drown his sorrows. If they could do post-mortems on broken hearts, we could have taken my friend's.

Then one day we got a breakthrough. One of her former classmates in college confided in us that the girl had gotten a new man who had a car. Apparently, the girl was so impressed by the man's means that at the sight of an old car's dashboard, she was more than willing to unleash and put on display her own dashboard!

This was irrespective of the fact that when they two lover birds were in college together, they weathered many storms. A love affair of more than four years was buried in a smoking bellow of an old jalopy. This is not the only instance I would watch a brother lose out.

Severally, when catching pints in one of those dimly-lit pubs in the alleys that you wouldn't want your mother ever to get wind of your patronage, I watched young university students lose their girls to other men. All that a man needed to net a young damsel in a pub is dangle his, not balls; his car keys.

The girls would miraculously melt into the washroom, spend hours on end only to re-appear, this time at the guys with the car at the corner. Knowing that a brother was in for heartache, we would cut our losses and leave. Shockingly, even today I see grown up women crane their necks from a matatu, admire me in my Subaru during rush hour. Well... whether they look at me or my car I'm not sure, but we are both eye candies anyway!