One of the great advantages of getting older is the ability to pretend you are losing your hearing. I have finally entered that secret society where the men of my family that started saying...“ehhh?”, long before their retirement. I now understand why my father and grandfather, after mumbling it, were always smiling.
“Bernie, did you forget about playing bridge with the Herberts?”. I too just smile.
Of course, sharing the same interests with my girlfriend, as we get older, is something I cherish. We have always had a mutual love for travel, animals and the environment. Lately, however, we have added reading glasses, bran and naps to our common interests. We still talk about exercise but it is no longer scuba diving or kayaking. Now I hear how far away I parked from the Macy’s front door and how she doesn’t have the right shoes for this type of exertion... (never understood why anything on your foot should not be for walking). We still take our daily constituitons but instead of a thinner waste, we do it for digestion.
I think it is one of life’s ironies that when it becomes important to read the ingredient labels on boxes, the print is too small. And when you can afford the many nice restaurants, the light is often too faint to make out the menu. I often ask the waiter what he recommends, not because I care for his opinion but rather as a way to find out what is on the menu. Italian restaurants are the worst. They seem to feel if they italicize a few words or drop a little Italian in each sentence the food is going to taste more like your grandmothers.
My daughter has taught me one very important lesson. Never eat at a restaurant that has pictures of the food. Never once did you come home for dinner and upon asking, were you handed photos. Don’t change what works. Of course going to eat at 4-5 pm has its advantages. You usually get to see the waitress tie on a clean apron as her shift is just beginning and the menus have not become scratch and sniff cards from a bad John Water's film. There are only lines when the local Grizzler has their ‘Seniors eat for Half Price Thursdays’. They are a pretty shrewd company, however. First, they offer a whole host of menu items that fall into the ‘Oh…I can’t eat that’ category… or more often you will hear my girlfriend say much louder than normal, “Bernie, don’t eat that …you know what happens when you eat that!”
My daughter has taught me one very important lesson. Never eat at a restaurant that has pictures of the food. Never once did you come home for dinner and upon asking, were you handed photos. Don’t change what works. Of course going to eat at 4-5 pm has its advantages. You usually get to see the waitress tie on a clean apron as her shift is just beginning and the menus have not become scratch and sniff cards from a bad John Water's film. There are only lines when the local Grizzler has their ‘Seniors eat for Half Price Thursdays’. They are a pretty shrewd company, however. First, they offer a whole host of menu items that fall into the ‘Oh…I can’t eat that’ category… or more often you will hear my girlfriend say much louder than normal, “Bernie, don’t eat that …you know what happens when you eat that!”
Actually I do, it will irritate the hell out of her. There is a theory that matches were intended to make starting fires easier. Frankly, it was to keep one bathroom marriages intact.
Any early buffet is a study in silver, blue, yellow and the no hairs. The first and last need not mention. The middle two, however, must come from some chemical reaction used somewhere in the preening process. The blue I kind of get, blue is really very close to the color white. Yellow just seems avoidable. My grandmother said it was from men using hair tonic. I asked her why it never turned my grandfather’s thick mane yellow. “Because your grandfather never put it on his hair, he drank his”.
Secrets from the grave; the makers of my family were starting to reveal their secrets. I still remember when I found my first gray hair. I was 50. Thankfully, I found it on my girlfriend's head.
Secrets from the grave; the makers of my family were starting to reveal their secrets. I still remember when I found my first gray hair. I was 50. Thankfully, I found it on my girlfriend's head.
My girl's sense of humor has deepened too. She thinks she knows what my jokes are going to be and I make an effort to be original. “You’re not funny”, is her favorite comment and every time she does,I respond with the multi cultural response, “Oh yeah? Well pull my finger!”
An act of self-preservation she has never acted upon. I plan on saying that to her when I am on my death bed. She will say no at first but she will then acquiesce since it will be my final wish. Understand I have planned this for 20 years. I just want to be able to use the punch line after she pulls my finger...
An act of self-preservation she has never acted upon. I plan on saying that to her when I am on my death bed. She will say no at first but she will then acquiesce since it will be my final wish. Understand I have planned this for 20 years. I just want to be able to use the punch line after she pulls my finger...
“Man…it smells like death in here”. Get it...? I am on my death bed? I know...I can hear my girlfriend now,“You're not funny”.
I was asked if we were going to be buried together in matching plots. I say why would I want to spend all eternity sleeping next to her when we have separate bedrooms now? Hard to believe I would be asked this when I have one foot nearing the grave. I am getting too old for two steps forward and one step backward. She did promise, though, that if I die first she was going to have my gravestone engraved with...
"Now, that was funny"
