Love and Marriage - The Skinny

Here's one from Uncle Jerry for your bumper sticker and to embroider on your fancy throw-pillow: "Love is a Mysterious Elixer and Marriage is a Fragile Vessel". You're welcome. This nugget came to me after reading an article about a 99 year-old man who is divorcing his 96 year-old wife of 77 years over an affair in which she had apparently indulged - when Ike was president, some 60 years ago... Ike or Truman, not certain - I am not known for my thoroughness and my grasp of presidential history is tenuous at best.

I am probably not the one who should be making hay at the expense of a failed marriage; after all, I am working on my third and attribute most of the credit for its current success to the fact that she lives in Mexico and I live here in the US of A. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, it's true - but it also solves the problem of fighting over the television remote and drinking milk from the carton. Not the most qualified person to expound on the disintigration of this union, perhaps - they were married for 77 years, after all - but I will try.

First of all, kudos for making it 77 years in the first place. God bless you both. I cannot imagine living with the same woman for 77 years any more than I can imagine eating the same breakfast cereal every day for 77 years. And extra kudos for living to be 99 years-old - that's almost a hundred and I think you get a watch. Barring building a resistance to Iocane Powder over time, I imagine I would have undoubtedly been poisoned by my lovely bride around year 22. Or right about the time Elvis made his debut on the Ed Sullivan Show.

However, kudos delivered, what in the hell were you doing rifling through your wife's things. You're 99 years-old, for Chrissakes. The only thing you should be searching through is the cabinet where they keep your sippy cup and cheap Scotch. Apparently, the man was going through a storage chest of his wife's and came across a bundle of love letters from her one-time flame. When confronted with the letters, the wife came clean and the man proceeded to kick her ass to the curb. That's moxy, if you want my opinion. If I was 99 and my wife admitted to an affair from over half a century ago, I would probably simply ask if that's where I got the genital warts. That would teach her. Then I would go back to my sippy cup and Charlie's Angel re-runs. At that age, with that much water under the creaky bridge, it might be more cavalier to let bygones be bygones.

My guess is that the guy was looking for a reason to get rid of his wife. Probably had been for 30 years. She was most likely a nag and he didn't have the stomach for murder. Either way, he can look forward to spending his post-golden years in bacheloric bliss. He'll load himself up on the Viagra and wheel himself down to the rec-room and get himself some busy. And maybe buy a puppy, if he's optomistic. Or a 7 year-old blue tick hound rescue dog if he's not feeling so sunny about the days and weeks ahead.

I see what I have to look forward to. I'll try to be patient and weather the storms ahead and maybe I can make it to 99 with the current wife. My guess is that for this to happen, she'll need to stay in Mexico for another 32 years and bring me a big sippy cup when she does come home.