The Troglodyte Breeder

When I was younger and my generation were still modeling their future dating and marriage prospects on Michaela and Sully in 'Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman' (ie super chaste and slow moving) a friend of mine described his future plans.

Please understand that most of our knowledge was coming from our limited understanding of procreation in humans but our vast knowledge in breeding - that's what happens when you're born into a farming community. He said he was going to have a hot wife and a breeding wife. One wife to attend all social functions looking hot and one with a proven track record of fertility to birth all the children. In my mind she also had large child bearing hips, maybe some curly hair. 

I suppose biblically he wasn't on the wrong track. Abraham followed a similar trajectory, as did others. One is covering all the bases, so to speak. 

Now that we're all older and have discovered that children aren't made with longing glances across the creek, while you suture a gold prospectors leg back on, one realises that Dr Quinn had no idea what was coming for her. 

Now that I am firmly 40, almost 41, I'm having to face a lot of realities about the whole womanhood, baby bearing, aging thing. I do suspect that I am on the dramatic side of the scale - I'm on the dramatic side of everything else after all - so here's the picture I want to paint of how I've turned out as a breeding wife, in a tv series I like to call The Troglodyte Breeder...

In this tv series I would take my current self and reimagine her as a cave dweller at the dawn of man.

Episode 1: Troglodyte can't hear.

From her early days our young cave girl day dreams quite a lot while hunts, berry picking and shroom eating are being planned by the tribe. Mainly because she's disinterested in being told what to do and also because she actually can't hear a lot of what is being said so she just shuts off and doesn't know the POA for the upcoming hunt. Somewhere in the episode our girl is recreating a primitive Timotei advert and is saved by her brother because she didn't hear the herd of elephants storming her preening spot. 

Episode 2: Troglodyte can't see.

As our girl grows up her astigmatism gets worse and worse. She is often confined to the back of the cave with migraines and gets taken off the berry picking committee because she can no longer tell a tick from a freckle. It's quite a slow moving episode. 

Episode 3: Troglodyte gets a rash.

Now a woman - miraculously because being almost deaf and blind the prospects weren't looking favorable - our cave girl develops an allergy to everything. Grass, flowers, sea water, some lotions, leather, wet skin... it appears that everything she touches makes her skin break out into large red rashes. This means that even the most menial of labour is a no go zone. She can't actually be outside in fear of nature having it's way with her so now if she isn't confined to the back of the cave with a headache she is confined to the back of the cave with a rash. 

Episode 4: Troglodyte gets calcyfic tendinitis. (A sore shoulder)

The calcium growths in our cave woman's rotator cuff result in her having to pivot from the floor like an Australian breakdancer. She is now limited to the use of only one arm - her left one- because if she so much as stretches her right arm out of her prehistoric car to put a pin code into a prehistoric key pad she will be in historic agony. 

Episode 5: Troglodyte is a breeder

Despite all her flaws the clan decide to keep her because she's good at gestating and delivering babies. What she lacks in physical senses, allergic baselines and ergonomic prowess she makes up for in a determined desire to prove her worth by supplying her people with strong tykes who hopefully have enough other DNA in them that a generation of blind deaf nafs aren't born.

Episode 6: Troglodyte hits perimenopause

Now statistically heading towards the end if her tenure (given life expectancy expectations in neanderthals) our breeder is very ready to not procreate. She's done her bit and is ready to sleep through the night from her position at the back of the cave. Unfortunately her ovaries have sensed the coming road closure and have decided that she should give it one more go and she suspects that should she get pregnant it would probably be with triplets. The PMS, mood swings, hot flushes, fatigue, apocalyptic tendencies and overall unpleasantness of a week in her month are getting very overrated. 

 Season Finale: 

The season ends with a deaf, blind, headached woman raging at the back of a cave maniacally scratching a rash covering her whole body. She dares any of the male members to come near her because if she were to fall pregnant the end would be near, for them. Sadly for her she can only defend herself with her gimpy left hand while the right one hangs uselessly by her side. Fortunately for her the rash and the hot flush have made her so unattractive that no one would dare go near her. She's also really loud and full of complaints so the clan decide to move to the adjoining cave.

Peace returns to the clan and the hot wives serve the berries they picked and continue working on their small leather thongs while planning the venue for tomorrow's padel. And the troglodyte breeder sleeps it off in her now empty, dark, quiet cave. Bliss.

Director's note: 

Thank goodness for hearing aids, lasik eye surgery, myprodol, allergex, physio and shoulder surgery... unfortunately, and bizarrely, we still don't seem to have managed to find a cure for PMS, so it's to the back of the cave I go. Do not disturb...