Help! I've locked the car and my wife is inside.

One cold February day my husband picked me up for lunch and we drove down the street to Woody's for a hamburger. As soon as he shut the door on his pickup, he knew he had locked the keys inside. In the old days one would have asked around for a coat hanger or flyswatter handle to bend into a hook, force past the top of the window and fish for the knob on the lock post. We called the locksmith who said his helper could be there in fifteen minutes.

We ordered our food. Before we were done eating, the assistant came in the restaurant with Ed's keys and pointed out the obvious. The pickup was unlocked. However, he had a problem. The bar he used to slide past the window and jimmy the lock mechanism inside the door was stuck in the passenger side door. He told us to go ahead and finish eating while he tried to get it loose.

When we went outside a few minutes later he was still wrestling with the tool. It was only 10 degrees Fahrenheit and I worried about whether I was going to have to walk nearly a mile back to work. Since the pickup was actually unlocked, I got in, started the engine and fired up the heater. It was beginning to be nice and toasty inside while Ed and the locksmith both put their minds and their muscle to loosening the slimjim.

Allow me to paint the scene for you:  A woman is sitting inside a running vehicle. Two men appear to be trying to force the door open on her side.

About that time another customer exits the restaurant. Did I mention that we are parked right in front of the entrance?  The new actor in the scene might be 19 or 20 years old. The first thing he notices are the two men fighting with the slimjim. There are more than enough hands doing that work and he doesn't ask if they need help. Then his gaze slides past them to me sitting in the passenger seat. At that point he stops and looks back and forth from me to them, then from them to me. It is obvious he is wondering why the woman in the cab doesn't just open the door from the inside. I grinned at him. A big, vacant grin that left him wondering if that woman went off her meds very often.

By the time he was out of sight the slimjim finally came loose from whatever it had snagged and I didn't have to get out of the warm cab and walk back to work.

The Difference Between Men and Women

At one time my workplace employed a human resources manager who had the idea he could whip the one hundred or so employees into lean, fit, non-smoking examples of health and well-being.  He devised weight-loss competitions, endurance training and organized a softball team. The encouragement to participate was sweetened with prizes for winning teams. Non-participants were penalized. The only employees excused from joining the annual competition were those whose job provided sufficient physical exercise in the form of brisk walking or lifting and toting.

Interestingly enough, one of the approved activities consisted of reading up on health issues of your choice. No physical exertion involved.

I don't like organized sports. I kept a log of the routine I did at home on my rowing machine, elliptical, and cable weights.

Eventually, the HR manager moved on to another job, and his position was filled by a woman who threw out all his ideas for molding the perfect body. A mandatory annual mini-physical courtesy of the company replaced the competitions. Employees with a recent physical from their doctor were excused.

I haven't been to the doctor since my youngest was born 35 years ago.  So, at the appointed time I showed up to get weighed, measured, and poked. I tried to time it so that I could be first and get to my job at a different location. A lot of company truck drivers had the same idea, and I stood in line and watched them step on a bathroom scale, the first test in the physical.

This wasn't just any scale. In fact, the word scale didn't appear on the box. It was a weight loss monitor. It said so on the box which was hiding under a table with other containers in which the technicians had carried their equipment. I asked the husky man standing in front of me why it wasn't called a weight gain monitor. He cheerfully agreed it would be in his case. The first volunteer confidently stepped on the "monitor." I noticed he was wearing steel-toed work boots and a bulky winter coat. After noting his weight, the technician proceeded to measure his waist using a flexible tape measure. He did not remove his coat, and I couldn't help asking why he left it on. He laughed and said that next year he'd get measured without the coat and it would appear his health had drastically improved.   O-kay.

I watched six more guys get weighed and measured before moving on to other technicians who took their blood pressure and tested their blood sugar and cholesterol. Of those six only one removed his coat. But that fellow allowed himself be weighed with at least five pounds of tools hanging on his belt.

My turn rolled around, and I shucked out of my lightweight coat, considered and discarded the idea of taking off my shoes, and dropped my handbag. I sucked in my waist to get measured, but it didn't matter.  The technician left a good two inches of slack in the tape measure. In my opinion, the numbers skewed the BMI (body mass index) which compares height to weight and indicates possible health risks.

The experience left me wondering if those men simply didn't give a damn what they weighed or if they had a bad attitude toward the required physical and could care less about the results. Regardless, I saw a bunch of male employees do something a woman would NEVER do. Women do care what they weigh and would never deliberately add on pounds of accessories or get their waist measured without being down to bare skin, standing up straight, chest out and stomach sucked in.