Life with an engineer

Actually it should be titled “Life with a BRITISH engineer”. I have no idea what American engineers are like, and perhaps this British engineer is unique. However I have been assured that while he does have some unique aspects, he's not really all that different from the others.

First of all, I really feel obliged to mention that the engineer that I’m married to has all the social graces of a flatulent wart hog. He has no conception of how one should behave in the company of others. If someone is talking to him and he is not at all interested in what they have to say, he simply walks off, leaving them with their jaw swinging open in mid sentence. I do the best I can to pick up the pieces, but the damage has been done and they quickly excuse themselves to find someone a little more socially adept to talk to. 

He has never wondered why we’re not invited to parties or anyplace for that matter anymore.

All engineers seem to have their little pet passions. “Himself” has two. Trains and taking things apart.

I can sort of live with the train bit. After all, that only rears it’s ugly head whenever we go on holiday or if he’s in severe need of a train fix. During the train craving times I find myself searching the internet for some local park or train yard that has trains running that particular week end.

Holidays on the other hand, can be a trial. He always plots our trips as close to old dead train lines as possible and the destination must have at least one train yard, usually filled with decaying and dead engines that some sad old engineer has spent his life savings on trying to repair. The Missus left him years ago in most cases, having found out that she took a very distant second place to the engineers fixation with trains.

“Himself” will drag his children and bored wife from stem to stern, oohing and aaahing over these pistons and narrow gauge that, boiler plate D, compressor F on and on and Yawn.

While that can really be annoying from time to time, it’s the other passion that drives me completely nuts. The “ I gotta take things apart” fixation. If it were old, battered, dead or dying things, I wouldn’t mind so much, if at all. But no. It’s the brand new stuff that has to come apart. New computer comes through the door and 30 minutes later it’s broken down to it’s small components. “Kathleen, quick, come look at this chip. This is a really big one. See it holds the RAM. Did you know that they can make these chips for just nickels and sell them for a huge profit margin. Of course with all the companies over in China, the profit margin is narrower, but“… on and on and Bigger Yawn!

I’ve watched new gas boilers come apart, cook tops, sewing machines, an exercise machine with built in clocks and counters, televisions, you name it… Fortunately it’s not often that we have extra pieces when he’s put them back together, even more fortunate, the misses pieces have yet proved to be central to the operation of what ever has been dismembered… sorry, dismantled.

So. Why did you marry "Himself” I hear you ask. Reaching back into the fog of distant memory, I believe it was because I was pregnant, ready to bring into the world, four more pedantic, train obsessed, glasses wearing, button pushing, techno obsessed little engineers. 

However, according to "Himself" it all comes back to flatulence. That’s right, the good old manly fart. He concocted this theory one evening after having watched a nature program. It is his contention that a woman is attracted to a man because of the smell of his fart. It has nothing to do with wit, the color of his eyes, looks or money. It’s the strength and smell of the fart that really tugs on a woman’s heart strings and that the louder the fart and more smelly, the stronger will be the bond between an engineer and his ’woman’.

He assures that this is how ALL real men find their mate. I’m sure that somewhere in amongst the extra pieces of every thing he’s taken apart, he has the data to prove it. 

Cheers!

Kathleen Petrides