Minor success in the battle against testosterone blindness

Testosterone blindness is a notion to which my wife introduced me decades ago.

That’s “introduced” in the widest possible, not to say euphemistic sense. You’ll understand what I mean when I tell you that testosterone blindness is the deplorable condition which prevents a man finding the sports bag that he has absent-mindedly, and inappropriately, left on the dining table.

A slightly modified variant prevents him seeing the pile of washing up that might usefully be done while his wife is out, to say nothing of the child who needs his nappy changing/his face washing/helping with his homework. It does not prevent the man in question finding the remote control that allows him to tune into the international rugby match taking place that afternoon.

It’s a sad affliction without, it would appear, hope of a permanent cure for those touched by it. That, however, doesn’t stop women trying to treat it, by forcefully expressed pointers towards the location of car keys, the floor that needs mopping or the child who needs taking out.

That form of treatment is like chemotherapy: it sometimes feels as bad as the disease it’s intended to cure and it leaves scars.

It was, therefore, a wonderful curative to have a little counter-experience today. Just before heading for Glasgow airport and a flight home, I received a message from my wife: “if you have time, please collect me some Occitane Lavender hand cream and a Refreshing Aromatic deodorant.”

I was at the airport early so time wasn’t a problem. I made for the Occitane corner in the Duty Free shop.

“May I help you?” said the pleasant woman who was standing by the shelves.

I explained my need.

“Ah, yes,” she said as she started examining all the shelves in the left-hand section of two dedicated to the products. She went through them all and then turned to the right-hand section, perusing them thoroughly from top to bottom. When she’d finished, she turned to the little island behind me which I hadn’t noticed before, and which had two sets of three shelves full of more Occitane products.

All to no avail. Neither of the products was on display.

“We don’t stock the entire range,” she explained apologetically, “I’m sorry.”

“Glasgow,” I began to think to myself, unjustly as it turned out. For my eye was caught by some tubes with purple labels.

“Hang on,” I said, “isn’t that lavender?”

I picked one up and examined it more closely.

“Oh, look,” I said, “it’s hand cream.”

“So it is,” she said, “now why should it have been there?” she went on, making me think of nothing so much as my frequently-voiced complaint, “Good Lord. I could have sworn I’d taken that upstairs/hadn’t left it there/had already put it in the car.”

“Now,” I went on, “I need a woman’s deodorant.” I thought perhaps I could find an acceptable alternative to “refreshing aromatic”.

I bent down to look at the little group of such deodorants, down near the floor. One caught my eye.

“Oh, look,” I said, “fraicheur aromatique. That sounds a bit like refreshing aromatic, doesn’t it?” Indeed, as I lifted the little bottle I saw that the English was printed underneath and confirmed my translation.

“Why, you’re right,” she said, in a near whisper. 

She sounded humble. As well she might.

Testosterone 1, Oestrogen nil

For we had just shared a moment that was exceptional, if not unique: a one-off triumph of testosterone vision over oestrogen blindness.

A mistake squared, or how getting it wrong about getting it right, gets everything wrong

Isn’t it curious, how an intelligent decision can flip so easily into its opposite and give way to utter dumbness?

In the office, my work laptop links to a docking station, which keeps it fully charged. So I don’t need a charger. Which means I don’t take it with me, and I’m pleased, because I carry the lot on my back: my work computer, my own computer (in case I want to write anything on the way in or on the way back), the charger for my computer (in case I run out of charge), two phones but only one charger (because they can both use the same one, and I’ve trained them to behave better than teenagers and take turns), my lunch, my notebook (A4 size – a bit bigger than letter size, since you ask in the US – and hard backed because that’s the only kind that stands that kind of battering), plus all the various plug adapters and multiple other things which just seem to accumulate in my rucksack and I never seem to remember to take out when I get home (cf women’s handbags).

Because I decided to leave the charger at home, I chose to put it in an intelligent place. The drawer where I keep lots of useful cables and computer-y things which I need from time to time. It’s getting pretty full these days, with the things I actually use near the top, and the bottom rather like the deeper recesses of my rucksack or a woman’s handbag. It seemed the logical place to put the charger, because that’s where it obviously belonged.

So it was distinctly upsetting when, having decided to work from home, I looked for it and couldn’t find it.

“Blast,” I thought, “I could have sworn I left it there. I know I decided to. Where else could I have put it?”

I spent the next twenty minutes checking all the bookshelves, the other drawers, under the coffee table, and in all the helpful little boxes and chests we have which are just so useful to keep things you might need to find some day. When none of those revealed my charger, I tried upstairs in my bedroom (why would I have taken it there? No matter. I had to check. I have a bedside table and it has drawers) and the front bedroom that doubles as an office.

No joy.

So I phoned my wife. Naturally, I didn’t say what I was really thinking, which would have been, “you’ve tidied away my computer charger. Where did you put it?” No. I was much more tactful. “You haven’t seen it, by any chance?” – that kind of thing. Nothing accusatory (to her) or exculpatory (of me).

It turned out to be an inspired phone call. “I don’t know where the charger from the new machine is, but the one from your old machine is upstairs.”

“That won’t work…”

“It worked on my laptop, when I needed a charger, and your machine is basically identical to mine, isn’t it?”

Well, that was all true. I went and got the old charger, with its transformer the size and weight of a brick – the new one is not much larger than a mobile phone and considerably lighter – and tried it on my machine. It worked a dream.

A few hours later, however, frustrated by my failure to find the new charger, I decided to look again. Starting with the drawer where I should, if I were being sensible, have put it.

hands-freeAnd there it was. Where it had been all the time. I hadn’t spotted it because I’d forgotten what it looked like. When I’d looked at it, I’d assumed it was the device for taking hands-free calls in the car, which looks similar (I wonder where I put that, by the way?) I didn’t recognise it for what it really was, what I really wanted, my work computer charger.

There it was. In the incredibly well-oganised drawer,
where I keep electronic things so I can find them in a hurry

Now my wife, faced with my inability to find something I’m actually looking at, would simply attribute it to testosterone blindness. She may be right. But I think a more fundamental point is being illustrated here.

I’d done the right thing. Acted in an organised and intelligent way. And then behaved with ludicrous stupidity, turning a state of affairs that displayed commendable effectiveness (if I say so myself) into a textbook case of lamentable inefficiency (to which I have to confess).

Or putting it another way, I was mistaken to think I’d been mistaken, which was a pretty exasperating mistake.