A little while back the immobilizer on my car decided to totally immobilize our lives for at least a day. Not making it to school didn't phase my daughter too much, but the subsequent trek to Auto Electricians and their difficulties in getting a new one to work, highlighted the car as a centre of our lives. We were talking about it that evening, when my daughter got that puzzled expression:
"Is your car a He or a She?"
"She," I said, without hesitation. "For some reason, people seem to refer to cars as 'She'.
"I know. A friend of mine also called his car 'She' the other day. Why?"
"I have no idea." Her expression excluded the possibility of not knowing why. "Well, I guess - perhaps - it's because we treasure our cars, and we're proud of them, and we can't do without them. And because they need care and attention and we enjoy giving it to them?"
She gazed at me thoughtfully.
"Or perhaps," I continued hesitantly, "it's because they're sensitive and tempremental, cost you a fortune to maintain and are generally full of sh.t."
She grinned. "More likely, I think."
It got me wondering about how many other objects we assign genders to without being conscious of it , but frankly, I didn't come up with anything significant. I guess our cars really are so special to us that they defy "object" status!
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