coming out (a tat bit long)

[Theo Thepen <thepen@pi.net>]

Hello everybody,
As everybody has started to introduce themselves, I thought I would take the 
opportunity to come out.
I took me a long to come to terms with it, but I finally decided to admit it 
to myself and the rest of the world. Ever since I was a little boy I realised 
that I was different from the others boys in my neighbourhood. We just didn’t 
share the same interests. I have had a terrible childhood, being given the 
cold sholder by just about anybody. I think there must be some genetics 
involved as my father had the same anomaly. On nearly every picture of my 
dad, and of me as a child there is this same object in the center, a VW. So I 
have to admit it, I am a VW nutcase. No point in denying, I have to live with 
this problem and make the best of that what’s left of my life. It must have 
started at birth, I was practically born in the back of a ’56 oval. In all my 
childhood memories there is one of the beetles my dad owned. The 
earliest memories are from my dad, mother, grandfather, grandmother, uncle 
and me together with 50 kilo’s of potatoes, two tents and full camping 
equipment traveling to Spain for the holidays (in the oval). This was early 
sixties, French roads were not what they are now. The French however 
alredy were terrible drivers back then. The trip took 2 days, we stayed 10 
days and had to travel back another 2. One funny thing I remember very well 
is waking up in the middle of the night, climbing on the backseat to find the 
car empty. When I looked out the window, the car was about 6 feet off the 
ground and some funny speaking guys were replacing the engine. I was three 
years old and we were in Germany on the way to Spain when the engine blew. I 
never noticed anything, it’s so comfortable between the backseat and the 
engine. After that oval came three other standard beetles, one 1303, one 
golf, and a polo.
When I got my license I bought a scirocco GL, traded it 2 years later for a 
scirocco GLI, very beautiful and fast car, which I crashed into about 5 trees 
on either side of the road. The fire department had to saw me out of the car, 
I only had a cut in my nose and above the eyes and a slight concussion. There 
most have been someone up there watching over me. One thing he forgot 
however. My full insurance ended the day before I crashed, so nothing, niente 
nada, niks from the insurance company. Soon came a (cheap) passat, a golf and 
then I changed mark. I bought a volvo 480. No comments please, I still have 
it and I love it. During my Ph.D. I worked in Australia and needed transport. 
In the adds I saw a VW sedan for sale, what the ...k is a VW sedan?? It was 
only $400 so I took a look and it turned out to be a '63 notchback with which 
I fell totally in love.
When I came back to Holland I had to have one again so I bought one. It was a 
sound looking pearl white ’67 with steel sunroof. The emphasis in the 
previous sentence should be on ‘looking’. When I took it apart the body was 
badly rusted, beyond repair, all the mechanics were perfect though, it had 
only done 44.000 km. So I bought another identical car and started having 
fun. After 4 years of battle the car was back on the road again last year and 
I love driving it. There is only one slight problem. In order to be allowed 
to spent so much time with my VW baby in the garage, I promised my then 
girlfriend, now wife, it was for her when it would be finished. Seeing this 
problem coming nearer and nearer as the work progressed and as I had a lot of 
parts, especially engine and stuff, left over I decided to make a sneaky 
move. I bought myself a type 34 Karmann Ghia. I’m at present trying to get 
this car in perfect shape, but as I’m a fanatic when it comes to originality, 
this is going slow and eating up a lot of my money.
So now you know my story. My wife’s name is Andrea, and our son is called Ted 
(just turned one two weeks ago). We live in the Netherlands, I’m 37 years 
young, medical biologist by training, now working as an immunologist at the 
University in Utrecht. Love my present job, though I had an ugly fight with 
my previous boss, (which I think I won, but she’s to stupid to realise it 
probably. Yes, I’m still angry when thinking about it but that’s a completely 
different subject). Good thing about my job is frequent traveling all around 
the world. Apart from VW’s I love bikes, but only the aircooled variety. Hate 
those silly radiators in front of those Tupperware bikes (sports bikes), you 
even see them on so called choppers, yughh. Oh yeah, and I do love that Volvo 
too. Other hobbies are taking everything apart and trying to put it back 
together again even when it ain't broke, and photography. In combination with 
computing that’s great fun. Oh, I forgot, I’m also rebuilding our house.

PS Just found this out: If you do a spelling check in Word it suggests 
‘notches’ as a replacement for ‘nutcase’. That can’t be a coincidence !!!!!!

Hope you are all still awake ??????
Cheers,
Theo.
’65 KG34
’67 notchback
’72 Honda 500 F
’87 Volvo 480
’87 Yamaha 1100 Virago