My wife is an organized – make that highly organized – person. She makes lists of things to do, pay for, take care of, etc. Ask her and she’ll know exactly where something is in our home. Unsurprisingly, Joyce is a devotee of Konmari, that system of organizing put forth by Japanese Marie Kondo, “tidying by category and not by location.”
That makes us somewhat polar opposites. As a kid, I was someone who accumulated stuff fairly quickly, much to the chagrin of family. Broken toys, paperwork – name it – would find their way into heaps and cabinets and crannies of my bedroom.
And when that blessed day came when I got my driver’s license and got my first car – a trusty second-hand Volkwagen Brasilia my mom bought from my uncle – it wasn’t much of a stretch to assume that I had another place where I could collect stuff.
Fast-forward to when we first became “a thing” in 2001, Joyce was a graduating college student and I was then driving an equally trusty Kia Pride hatch. I’d pick her up at her house — sometimes straight from pulling an all-nighter at the Star’s old office in Port Area. Understandably, I’d doze off in the car while waiting for her classes to finish.
Those days, the back seat of the Pride was – you guessed it – usually an unusable heap of folders, files, and whatnot. Those days were before the ubiquity of things digital, so I’d bring home actual physical copies of press releases in an attempt to get a running start on the work that always needed to be done.
I asked her recently what she had thought of that, um, sight. “I was a bit surprised because that’s not the usual family car state I had in mind,” she said, trying to be polite. What she did though was, through no prodding of mine, organize that hot mess to the point that someone could actually sit back there.
Ah, love, indeed!
Since those days, I’ve always welcomed the sight of her organizing/tidying magic on the cars that I’ve had. So, men, I think it’s a big misconception to say that our queens are not at all interested in the cars that we drive and obsess over, and that even, gasp, our love for cars is considered competition.
Joyce would remind me when it’s time for a carwash, and even sometimes o a bit of interior cleaning herself armed with some car wipes. She’d ask me if it’s time for a PMS, or if we should have the registration renewed. A woman after my own heart!
“Just don’t make me write for motoring,” she warned me though.
My present car, a Toyota Yaris we call Rafa, is seven years old. “You won’t get rid of Rafa, right?” she once asked me. I was actually surprised by her remark, because I feel the exact same thing.
So enjoy a great Valentine’s Day with the queen of your life – aboard the car you both love.
