Surrounded by all these men and their tools, interested in having the interior of the walls well plastered before the frost hits, my ears pay more attention at random chatter. Even when they talk about their cars, I don’t mind spying. Even if the subject is way more alien to me than the house.

I hear about Diesel pumps and Diesel treatments – definitely nothing herbal about those. They keep talking about things they do under the hood, and laugh at times. Do they make any sexual analogies? Maybe, what do I know. Not an expert in mechanics.

Reading my mail, I see that my daughter’s boyfriend is looking to buy a car. A used one. She asks me. I ask Don and he replies with some basics, trying to be helpful. She answers back, thanking and saying that they already knew about these anyway. They’re just looking for a car service. And they don’t intend to buy a twenty years old car, like daddy having, but a five years one. Big difference. And thank you again!

Living in a non-mechanical universe, you don’t have to have an interest in looking under the hood. Let the pros do that, trust them, and their prices. There’s an entire social and commercial ecosystem revolving around the hood. When a woman brings the car to the service, prices can double. Mechanics have a gut feeling about our aversion to opening and looking under the hood. They monetize on this.

Not anyone has the stomach, and knowledge combined, to cut and fix the human body, like doctors do. Inclination, vocation, talents, needs, desires and other factors contribute to specialisations and trades and fields of human activity. Money unite them by means of compensation, profit and worth.

Compensation for what? Profit from whom? Worth of what?
When you, the person, became the product.

And when you stop and think where this process has begun: with your fear to open that hood.

Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash