A young man appeared at my door who promptly introduced himself as an employee of a renewable energy supply company. When I showed interest in knowing what he was proposing to me, the boy (I say boy because he would not be more than thirty years old) comes away with one of those questions that a woman with faith in the men of her country and her generation hopes not to have to hear: “Is your husband home so we can talk?”

I, who was even in a good mood, even though it was Saturday afternoon and wanting everything but to spend him talking about weekly bi-hours, immediately let my smile fall and asked: “Sorry, but if it was a man opening the door for you, would you ask him to call his wife?”, “Oh those are men’s questions” he replied smiling, ending with “I don’t want your husband to ask what you’re doing out here with someone else man”. All that came out of that boy’s mouth were pearls. I took a deep breath, thought about the price of the kw/h he was proposing to me and answered a fifth of what I would have liked to have answered: “You don’t even know if I have a husband or not. Anyway, I’m the one who is here and the contract is in my name, so either you explain to me what you came here to sell, or you can go talk to the neighbor who, lucky for you, is not married.”

I ended up signing the papers, attributing to my dignity a total value of 2 cents per kw.

Last year we decided to make a vegetable garden. As we have chickens, goats, sheep and other animals that, not being ours, decided to live with us, it was imperative to set up a fence. After navigating the seas of Pinterest for nights on end, I decided I was going to do a pallet seal. I had the whole project in my head. I found a place on the internet that sold pallets in good condition and off I went with my husband.

When we arrived, after walking through endless aisles of pallets of various sizes and shades of brown, we chose our favorites. “Good afternoon. I liked those pallets at the back and I wanted to know how much each one is.” I said it with all the joy of someone who starts the execution of a Pinterest project. “€8” replied the gentleman dryly. I went back to the charge “And if we buy twenty, do you get a discount?” And it was then that, once again, I came face to face with him, the monster with the “M” on the shirt, when the gentleman replied: “I don’t negotiate with women.”

There are times when our marriage is put to the test. That was one of them. If my husband had tried to negotiate with you, today there would not even be a husband for the electricity boy to call. I looked the gentleman in the eyes and with all the calmness I pretended to have at that moment I said “5€ per pallet with delivery on Monday”. “Okay.”

When I reported these two episodes to my mother, she told me that last week she called a gentleman that my father knew as a child, to visit the studio he was renting. He replied: “Then I’ll talk to your husband so he can come here to visit first.” When he described this phone call to me, I couldn’t help but visualize that gentleman riding a horse, with a mustache of those that curl at the end. I really have a hard time imagining someone under a hundred years old with such a mentality.

And it is for all this and many other episodes that I have not reported so as not to make this chronicle a small book that, although we often talk about the macho man as an endangered animal, I see almost daily, and with great sadness, that there are still many out there, savages.