Retired couples

July 7, 2019

“Retired married couples”

            Raise your hand if you are one-half of a retired married couple. Keep your hands up, while I take a count. – I’m messing with you, here. I was hoping your spouse would walk in and see you with your hand up. Give one of you a moment to laugh at the other.

            Any lasting relationship between two people requires that at least one of them have a good sense of humor. I just made that up, but I’m confident that careful research will back me up on that. Both Kay and I have been retired for a few years now, and we get along great. I attribute much of that to my sense of humor. Kay attributes it to her massive abundance of patience. Whatever.

            It’s absolutely amazing how much Kay’s sense of humor has been refined over the past 48 years. Tuesday morning, I was using a squeegee to remove water droplets off the walls and glass door of the shower. Seems Kay hates water spots. Won’t tolerate ‘em. So, she walked into the bathroom, took one gander, and made a remark about the results of one of my surgeries. The comment was a hoot, and I would share it with you, but it would require medical jargon. You’d leave me halfway through the first paragraph.

            Same day, I walk into the bedroom and Kay explains that she’s looking for her bra. When I told her that it was hanging on the TV tray rack in the corner of the room, she said, “That’s the wrong one.” The wrong one? Begs the question, if something is wrong with your bra, why keep it?

            Men don’t keep wrong bras. And, we certainly don’t have wrong underwear. I don’t care if I’m going to a wedding or to the Y to lift weights -- like that’s ever going to happen -- I reach into my drawer and grab the first thing that feels like underwear. And I’ll have you know that a pair of underwear can last me up to five, ten years. Holes don’t bother me as much as elasticity. You lose elasticity and you’ll have to send your wife for more underwear. Just make sure she doesn’t buy any of the “wrong” ones. Women are nuts. That’s what I told Kay, but she didn’t laugh. I could sense that she was reaching deep for another bag of patience.

            I’ve mentioned it before, but when Kay and I both took an IQ test, there was one point difference between us. Strangely enough, I was the smarter one. Were we to take a test today, she’d beat me by at least by a couple of digits. If the test had any questions about dogs, insects, flowers, or computers, the results would show that Kay was a genius who married an ignoramus.

            Without a doubt, I’m a smarter person because of Kay. Take this morning. I was at the table eating a boiled egg and cottage cheese. (Note: As a child, had anyone told me that I would one day eat cottage cheese, I would have thrown something at ‘em.) Anyway, while I was eating my well-balanced breakfast, Kay was reading the newspaper on-line, a talent that I’ve yet to acquire.

            At one point, she informed me that Florida had declared open season on iguanas. The huge lizards are apparently multiplying like feral hogs. Kay went on to tell me that the powers-that-be in the Cayman Islands paid to have people kill 800,000 iguanas. – I’m sorry. Did I say, “Kill”? I meant, “relocate.” They captured almost a million iguanas and relocated them to one of the Dakotas. Or Connecticut. Wherever.

            If Kay hadn’t shared that info about the iguanas, I would’ve been that much dumber. Now I’m that much smarter. Of course, Kay was way off about the boiled egg. How old is “too old” for a boiled egg? The sulfur-tasting thing had been refrigerated for months. When I was a kid, I kept my Easter basket beside the bed, so I could grab an egg whenever I was in the mood. I didn’t finish eating all the eggs until early July. A boiled egg that’s too old to eat? Give me a break.

            Back to the newspaper. Kay also told me about Norwegians putting GPS devices on blue foxes. -- Norwegians won’t tell you, but blue foxes look a lot like bear cubs. – Well last year, one of the foxes was tracked as far as Canada. It had travelled from Norway across the ice cap to Canada, a distance of 2700 miles. The baby bear, I mean adult fox, had covered 30 miles a day.

            I told Kay that a polar bear probably ate the fox and was unable to digest the tracking device, so it decided to hike to Canada. Ended up at a bar in Halifax. Kay then told me that they actually captured the fox, and it wasn’t at a bar in Halifax. (Pause) It was at a hockey game in Winnipeg. 

            After 48 years of marriage, the girl’s humor has evolved. The girl is giving as good as she gets. Just like ear hair, your sense of humor must evolve with age. If not, your time spent home-alone-with-your-retired-spouse is going to lose some serious elasticity. You don’t want that.

   

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