My girlfriend, Emma, is off to some kind of meet-up of boating enthusiasts. She calls it a ‘mess-about’, which I don’t really understand – apparently it’s a reference to a book or something. I have to say, I find it impressive that she knows so much about boats – including how to put them together, to some extent – but it does make me feel a little insecure about my own skills.
I can make killer poached eggs, which is no mean feat, but what’s that next to fitting an anchor winch? Services in Melbourne exist for doing that, so even if I did ever need to do such a thing, I wouldn’t have to know how to do it, but that’s not the point. Emma tells me that she likes that I don’t share this hobby with her, because it gives us both some space, but that just bothers me even more. What if it’s only a matter of time til she leaves me for some bloke who knows his way around an anchor swivel?
Yes, I do realise that I sound ridiculous. I just need to do something to assuage my feelings of incompetence in the field of seafaring. Perhaps I could read up on the basics of doing an outboard motor fix. Melbourne has plenty of libraries and the internet should yield no shortage of information… Who am I fooling, though? The reality is that I’m just not that into it. Maybe I should come to terms with the fact that Emma could probably fix the motor of our car, whereas I’d just take it around the corner to the mechanic.
We all have our own unique skill sets, don’t we? Like, I could just barely tell you the difference between a bow and a hull, but I can roast a teriyaki eggplant like nobody’s business. And, at the end of the day, I do appreciate that Jemima has her own interests and friends, even if I feel insecure about their shared love of servicing boat motors.