20 years - or approximately the same amount of time since "Rhythm Nation" was released

I was trying to explain to my (male) doctor this morning, why I feel so frustrated about not being pregnant yet.

“You’ve only been trying two months!” he said. “You can’t expect you body to just work on command like that!”

I know it almost always takes more than two months to get pregnant, I said. I know this sounds irrational to you – but most of my (female) friends seem to get it. (Apologies for the sweeping generalization…)

He just wasn’t getting it.

Look, I said, imagine you had a Porsche just sitting in your garage for TWENTY YEARS. For TWENTY YEARS you looked forward to driving it. You read about driving it, talked to other Porsche owners, watched your friends go out and drive theirs, but you couldn’t drive yours.

AND imagine that during that whole time, you had to maintain the car. You had to maintain it (let’s say… every month). You had to make car payments and insurance payments on it. And never, in TWENTY YEARS, could you drive it.

Then Finally. It was time to drive the thing. You went out to the garage, got in the car, turned the key and… nothing happened. The engine didn’t work. Wouldn’t you be just a little bit pissed??!!

In the back of your mind, you’d know that the car probably just needed a little tune up, a little oil to get it running – perfectly reasonable after sitting idle for so long. But still. It would feel unfair to have to wait a day longer. You already waited TWENTY YEARS.


Oddly enough, we have a friend who put just his sports car in storage. He wants to give it to his daughter when she turns 16. Right now she’s three. Can you say, recipe for disaster?