WITH enough leering intent that the drool almost ran down his chin, I remember a 42-year-old bloke - a police officer, as it was - conjuring the clothes off a teenage waitress and turning to his mate, who was in the process of doing the same, to remark that his wife just didn't understand him. His motor and hers were tuned to a different torque. "Why the bloody hell did they give me a sportscar when all I need is a mini," he complained.
Twenty years later he may have finally ended up with the mini and found that, matched with a fringe of silver hair around a bald pate, a small car was about all he really needed anyway.
Ricky Ponting, however, has ended up the not-so-proud owner of a mini - way before his age deserves - and he's not happy. Other than the captain himself the only thing on the planet suffering more over the fall and fallen grace of the Australian cricket team is the piece of chewy he worked over on that last day in Perth to such an extent that it was ground to a paste.
Ponting had driven through world cricket, powered by a set of wheels that would have made John Laws flush with jealousy - I'm thinking a 1955 Ford Thunderbird convertible, a Ferrari, a Bentley and a Hummer. Captaincy was a matter of choosing which one to stick the key into. With the back-of-house operation as good as any around, they'd all purr and, when on the open road, do a lot more.
They still give Ponting cars to play with. They're still polished and full of petrol. They get from A to B but one of them has seen better days, one is a top-end family wagon with a left-hand drive that makes it stand apart. But, the other two are vehicles you'd be worried about lending a friend - a Commodore that's been retooled with an engine from a Datsun 180B while the other not only goes slow it uses a hell of a lot of petrol.
The problem for Ponting is that, once you've driven a fine automobile, drunk a good wine or even owned a decent greyhound, it's hard to go back to a clunker, a cardboard red or a dachshund.
Ponting, the one-time bother boy of Australian cricket who made good to lead the team, may decide he's really a lover and not a fighter after all. Lovers, like old men who realise a smaller motor will do them just fine, get behind the microphone, travel the world for free saying admirable things about the admirable efforts of other cricketers; fighters dig in and try to make the best of the bunch of keys they've been handed.
How bad does he want it? How bad indeed, after 126 Tests - enough days that if you put them together they'd stretch all the way back to April 2007 when Kevin Rudd was still a fresh-faced Opposition leader feeling the love and loving the feel of public adoration.
In Ponting's case cricket goes back a whole lot further than that. He was pulled into "the system" at 16 and remains there now 18 years later - 18 years in which Australia claimed every cricketing prize on offer and "world champions" seemed an insufficient description of their dominance. Instead of competing with other nations, Australian cricket teams began to compete with each other for the most consecutive victories and batting averages blew out to heights only previously charted by legendary figures.
Captaincy is one thing; leadership quite another. Accustomed to striding the world like giants as they belted all before them, the Australian side now needs a leader who can hide a grimace when fate fires the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune directly at his backside. It needs a leader who can pull them out, snap them over his knee and move on - not one who whinges at the damn unfairness of it all.
Life's not getting any easier at the top or wherever it is Ponting's team sits because, if it is the top, the peak is getting more congested than Everest in climbing season. After England made a quick foray up and back only to have their standard tossed off after them, India and South Africa have stuck their colours so firmly in the mountain top and when the wind settles it's hard to see the Australian flag any more.
And that's not how things are supposed to be at this time of the year. Throwing some disoriented foreigners into the pit a day after they've been filled full of Christmas delights like a goose being prepared for a foie gras finish and then battering them around the head, neck and shoulders for five days straight makes the blood of nationalism pump strongly. Since England scrimped a win in 1998, it's worked a treat and the sucker punch is the dazed visiting team then gets a couple of days to recover their bearings before they're out on the SCG for a repeat dose.
Worked well for a decade although now the joke has the potential to fall uncomfortably flat. Even when the Visigoths sacked Rome they didn't make fun and games with the citizens and their lions.