Stockings, Fan Belts, And The Modern Man

Mrs Lobster and I were in a bit of a fix the other night.  We were driving back from an afternoon in Brighton, when a few warning lights lit up on the car dashboard and some of the meters started going nuts.  Mrs L looked in the car manual that was still in its dedicated holder in the glove compartment, probably unread since my dad had bought the car in 1993.  “It’s the alternator,” she announced, pointing to one of the lights.  While I had no idea what could be causing the alternator to signal its distress, I knew enough to know this was not a good thing.  We pulled over, and I called my dad.

“Sounds as if your fan belt’s broken,” he said.  “Have a look under the bonnet.” After a bit of peering about, I noticed a couple of engine bits that looked as if they should be joined together by something.  Delighted as I was at my new-found mechanical expertise, I nonetheless thought it prudent to recognize its limits, and phoned my breakdown insurance service.

While we waited in the darkening evening for the truck to arrive, Mrs Lobster offered the opinion that, if she’d been more of a traditional woman and worn stockings instead of jeans, we would have had the old “get you home” fix for a broken fan belt.  I, in turn, pointed out that I would have had to be a more traditional man to know what I was doing enough to make any use of a stocking in that way.

I imagine some people might see this situation as an illustration of the lamentable way in which men and women are losing their gender identities, converging to some androgynous median through the twin curses of sexual equality legislation and banning conkers from school playgrounds.

However, I looked at it more from the point of view that modern life has allowed men (and indeed women) to delegate having to know about car repair to a market full of affordable and reliable service providers, allowing them to spend their leisure time on other, equally manly, pursuits, such as playing warfare games on their computers or watching football on the telly.  We haven’t become lesser men because we no longer have the same life skills (although knowing how to launch a rocket-propelled grenade in a console game might not be quite as useful on an everyday basis as, say, changing a plug).  We just don’t have to conform to some standard idea of what a man knows and does – in the same way that women aren’t expected to wear two-piece woollen skirt suits and stockings to leave the house.

Of course, there are times when I wish I did know more (or indeed anything at all) about mending cars, but I don’t feel I need to smoke a pipe and have a well-maintained lawn-mower in the shed to show my face in the pub.

Contact the author here: thewhy@morningquickie.com