To the men in our lives...

PUT the battle of the sexes aside for a moment, because it's confession time. This is what women really think about men.

Author Kathy Lette in Australia to promote her latest book Altar Ego, 25/11/98. P/

PUT the battle of the sexes aside for a moment, because it's confession time. This is what women really think about men.

Women are now economically independent and (with a little donor help) we can impregnate ourselves. If our vibrators could kill spiders in the bath tub, tell us we don’t look fat in stretch lycra and kiss our upper eyelids, would we need men at all?

Well, okay, you boys do have some redeeming features. You definitely take a woman’s mind off shoe shopping which is a good thing as otherwise we gals would have more pairs of shoes than the entire cast of Riverdance! Oh, and there is the whole snake-catching/ tent-pitching side of you we totally appreciate too. Not to forget the jacking up of cars to change flat tires in the pouring rain. That’s a very attractive quality. As is going downstairs to bash the cat burglar over the head with the bread board, come to think of it.  

Okay, I grudgingly confess to the men in my life, you blokes are better than me at quite a few things – parallel parking, jar opening, elk-stalking, map reading, oh and handling a crisis. During times of stress, the men in my life have a tendency to fly into a great nonchalance. While I’m running around in hysterics at the merest hint of drama, “No worries” is your calm and capable response.

And then there’s the Aussie male sense of humour. My male mates have a black belt in tongue-fu, firing off jokes, one-liners and acerbic asides with side-splitting effect. My best male pals, Adam Hills, Patrick Cook, Closet Aussie Billy Connolly, Barry Humphries, and co regularly have me hyperventilating from hysteria.

As do our male politicians. Paul Keating’s description of John Howard as a “shiver looking for a spine to run up” is now world famous. As is his analysis of Peter Costello as “all tip and no iceberg.”  Not to forget his portrayal of listening to John Hewson as being “flogged with a warm lettuce”. Yep. Aussie male humour is drier than “Gandhi’s flip flop”, as my Dad would say.

Which brings me to the most important man in my life. My darling dad worked in Optic Fibre. His name was Mervyn. We call him Optic Merv. He was once a famous rugby league player for the Bulldogs. In fact, for a time, he was the fastest front row forward in Australian history. All he wanted was four boys whom he could train to tackle and scrum and run….What he got instead were four feisty daughters. The poor man retreated into his garage. And who could blame him?

I suspect all teenage daughters take their Dads for granted. He was just the nocturnal creature who vanished in the early morning and only reappeared  at night. Habits included putting out the garbage, untangling the pool sweep and brewing his own beer, which occasionally exploded. Dad was just the tall, muscular figure who could save us from cockroaches/mice/ floods/ bushfires, and deal with the scariest of creatures, like huge, hairy spiders, with a quick and simple thwack of a tea towel. He was also handy for catching my sister’s pet snake which had escaped yet again and was lurking somewhere in the living room. He was also most helpful when I needed to hotwire the car because I’d lost the keys down at the beach. The man could even find the square root of the hypotenuse. (Hell, I hadn’t even realised it was lost!)

Dad was the one to go out to get medicine from the all-night pharmacist 30km away,  at two in the morning in the teeming rain. He was the one who took all the film footage of the family – but was never in any of it; just his voiceover, explaining how many miles we’d got to the gallon that day and the exact exchange rate compared to yesterday or the gradient of the nearest railway line. He was always our hero - the head which was furthest out in the sea, bobbing through the breakers before surfing to shore like a human hydrofoil.

Although not demonstrative, (some Aussie Dads of this vintage are emotional bonsai – you have to whack on the fertiliser to get any feelings out of them) – he always displayed his love for us through actions. Every time we girls went home, our fan belts were tightened, tires pumped, gauge pressures checked, oil changed,  and there were suddenly new contact points in the distributor and fresh oil in the differential. (Whatever the devil that is. It’s all Swahili to me.) And when he asked me how many miles I was getting to the gallon – it was the equivalent of a Shakespearean love sonnet.

And when my sisters and I married and made families of our own, whenever a fuse needed changing or a digital stereo needed mending, or a tax return needed filing or the car needed tuning, our mental street directory was open, the streets mapped and marked – with all roads leading to Dad.

I’m pleased to say that Merv’s five grandsons, including my own gorgeous son, are all good at sport and at least three of them are showing a healthy interest in the tool box. Although my dad was too practical and down to earth to ever wear them,  it’s obviously a case of Designer Genes.

My kind, clever, twinkly eyed Dad died, quite unexpectedly a few years back, aged 82. Even though I’m an independent, feminist, middle-aged career woman, when my father died, I felt like a little girl in desperate need of her darling daddy.

It was only when he passed away, that my sisters and I truly understood how vital he was to our stability and happiness. It was only then that we realised he’d been our rock. It was our father’s loyalty and unconditional love, which gave we four girls the courage to take on the world. With the loss of our protector, my self-sufficient sisters and I felt suddenly and bewilderingly lost.

Dad’s death made me acutely aware of how precious you blokes truly are. To all the men in our lives –  our husbands, mates, darling dads and lovely sons, to our nephews, brothers, brothers-in-law, uncles and cousins, I just want to say, boys, we want to hang on to you as long as possible.

Across the world, men die an average six years younger than women. Typical, huh? Leaving all the cleaning up to we women! But joking aside, you blokes die way too young  and for reasons that are largely preventable. It doesn’t have to be this way. Movember is working towards a future where our fathers, partners, brothers and friends talk freely about their health and regular checkups are the norm.

So boys, this Movember, just remember, even though the girls in our family are loud, cackling away like kookaburras and ruling the roost, you are all loved and cherished. And, to all men I make this plea – take your health, seriously, okay? Otherwise the women in your lives are going to kill you!

Originally published as To the men in our lives...