Stuff Male People Like - Mini Maintenance

Today my husband asked me a very strange (well, I thought it was strange) question.  And I didn't answer him immediately because I was too busy thinking about whether I should do a quick wipe around the bathroom basin.  And then it hit me - I was thinking Microclean, he was thinking Mini-Maintenance!

And thus, Stuff Male People Like was born.

Mini-Maintenance

Male people are taught from childhood that they are responsible for fixing things.   Any self help book on opposite-gender relationships will tell the man of the couple that sometimes, his dear lady just wants a sympathetic ear, not suggestions on changes she should make.  But the Male Person can't help it contributing ideas for action - he's wired to fix, fix, fix.

Of course some Male People have this stereotype reinforced by wives who keep telling them they promised to change the light bulbs, take out the trash and wire any new plugs in their marriage vows, but I digress...

And so while the Female Person sees the need for a Microclean, the Male Person is ever watchful for opportunities for Mini-Maintenance.  This is important, you see, because doing Mini-Maintenance avoids having to do Major Maintenance, which is Mucho Moolah.

Hence you have household scenarios like this...

Scenario 1 - Household

The Female Person is about to grab a cloth and the All Purpose Cleaner to Microclean the brown blotch left on the ceiling from a dirty tennis ball thrown for Puppy Dog which bounced too damn high, when her brain is sideswiped by a question yelled from the kitchen by the Male Person:

"Why is the water pressure low?"

The Female Person has absolutely no idea how to answer this.  Water pressure?  Low?  How does he know it's low?  So what if it is low?  Why am I involved in this?  The Female Person chooses not to answer, hoping this confusing thing will just go away and she'll be able to reach the blotch on the ceiling without falling off the dining room chair.

"Is the washing machine on?" the Male Person yells.

Finally - a question that makes sense!

"Yes," the Female Person yells back. 

"Oh.  OK," the Male Person says.

None of this makes any sense to the Female Person - she is just glad that there seems to be a tone of resolution in the Male Person's voice and whatever that little thing was has now gone away.  Scary thoughts of being made to hold dirty tools while standing next to a muttering, cursing, angry Male Person attempting to perform some unfathomable type of household repair can now be put to rest.

Scenario 2 - Car

"Why is the petrol gauge showing full?" the Male Person asks.

Again, the Female Person has no idea how to answer this.  Her brain scurries to think of whether she filled up the tank recently.  Nope.  She couldn't get to the nice garage where they pump your gas for you before it closed so she just left it, driving past the self serve ones where you get dirty and break your nails.

The Female Person gives up.  Frankly, unless the little red light is on, who cares about the gas gauge anyway?

"This isn't right," the Male Person says.  "I filled up when we were at six thousand miles."

Once again, utterly meaningless to the Female Person.  Oh, wait - the odometer.  The Female Person does not understand the Male Person's fascination with this instrument.   Occasionally the Female Person will be stuck in traffic, notice that the last number is on a 9, and find some small, inexplicable pleasure at watching it click over to 0.  That's about it.

The Female Person stays quiet, for she knows that interjecting into the Male Person's internal dialogue would be relationship suicide.  The Female Person knows that the Focus Shift will come, she just has to wait it out.

As the journey progresses there is muttering.  The dashboard is tapped.  The engine is turned off at traffic lights and turned back on again to see what the gas gauge will do.  It is all very stressful to watch.  But, finally, there is a sigh and something about "covered under warranty" and it is over, for now.  The Focus Shift takes the Male and Female Person away from the dark place and back to whatever reason it is that they were in the car in the first place - thank God.

So let's take a look at what is happening in both of these scenarios.

1. Indication - There is a change, an sign that there could be a glitch somewhere in the machine.
2. Awareness - The Male Person notices the glitch.
3. Theoretical Analysis - The Male Person mentally analyzes all the things that could be causing the glitch, from a relatively benign temporary mishap through to a major moolah-munching malfunction.
4. Information Gathering - So as to make sure that things are not on the scary end of the scale, the Male Person starts by doing some digging.  As the Female Person is in the vicinity of the item with the glitch - she uses it every day - perhaps she's noticed something.  Poor Male Person.  He doesn't realize that, just as he doesn't see Microcleans, so she doesn't see Mini-Maintenance.  Until a red light blinks or there's an annoying beeping noise, the Female Person's fundamental presumption is that all is well with the world - as long as it's clean, of course.
5. Empirical Observation and Experimentation - Tapping, prodding, accelerating and breaking, pulling the steering wheel right and left, running hot then cold water, etc.  Here, the Male Person is trying to isolate factors that might be contributing to, or explain, the glitch.  He may also be trying to recreate a defect which, having occurred once while he was watching, is now irritatingly absent.
6. Recording of Observed Results - Basically: muttering.
7. Synthesis of Analysis and Reaching a Conclusion - Again: muttering.
8. The Go/No Go decision - To act, or not to act?  This is an important decision.  The Male Person firmly believes that dismantling the machine to find the root of the problem may save thousands in repair bills later, that stopping in to see the mechanic now may save having to purchase a major component which has to be shipped from a plant in Yugoslavia.  In short, acting now may prevent doom down the road.  
9. Execution - Depending on Go/No Go decision, this phase may or may not occur.  The carrying out of Micro-Maintenance is a testosterone-scented dance which should really be avoided by Female People at all costs.  The Male Person, depending on his actual ability in the area of question, may actually make an improvement and fix the glitch, or create a situation where the professional repair person has so much more to work with than they would have had if they were just called in in the first place.  Either way, the point is that the Male Person has carried out the Mini-Maintenance.  Even if the professional repair person has to be called in, at least the Male Person can instruct them with authority and ensure that there is no chance of being ripped off.  See?  Everyone's a winner!
10. Focus Shift - Once a resolution - to do nothing, or the achievement of the actual fix - is achieved, the Male Person's focus can shift to something else, and everything is OK again.

And so, by completing the cycle of Micro-Maintenance, the Male Person has saved the day.

Yes, he has, he really, really has.