Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

The other day, as I was channel surfing, I caught a snippet of a show that really piqued my interest. The host was interviewing (perhaps lecturing, is a better word) a young couple having some marital problems, and asked the husband what he thought his role was as "a man and a husband."

Getting no response from the young pup staring blankly at him the host offered: "How about listening? I mean really listening!" And then droned on for a while about duties, responsibilities and etc, until he was interrupted by a laxative commercial.

This got me to thinking (no, not about the laxative, thank you), but what that know-it-all talk show host left out. I'm letting you in on the single most important thing a guy brings to a marriage: bug killing! Sure there are other things that are important: love, money, sex, fidelity; even having a compatible mother-in-law is important. No doubt, countless marriages have survived lacking any number of such "important" attributes. My mother and father, for instance, were married fifty-two years and never had two nickels to rub together. And as for Hillary Clinton, well, someday when I have the time, I'll explain that scenario to you. Maybe.

But no marriage, even the ones made in heaven, can survive something that happens in my house - and your house too, I'm sure - all the time. It goes like this:

Honey, I can't get the car out of the garage!

Okay, I'll be right there. What is the garage door stuck again?

No, there's a spider on the floor.

Can't you walk around it?

No, I can't, but I can call Enterprise Rent-a-Car, if I have to.

A few choice thoughts to put the gas price situation in perspective: I got my first driver's license in 1946, when gasoline was five gallons to the dollar. My father had a '41 Chevy, which he let me use from time to time to go "down town" with the boys (we lived in the Bronx), and on an occasional date. The only time I ever filled the tank was when I was driving my folks somewhere, otherwise my friends chipped in - twenty-five cents a man, usually - to get our four or five gallons. I can't ever recall filling up the tank on my own until 1953, when I got married. Flushed with a pocket full of wedding presents and with my beautiful wife at my side, I rolled into a Sinclair station and for the first time in my life said, "fill 'er up!" It was a thrill and, yes, I was still driving my father's car, but this time it was a spiffy '52 Chevy. Those sure were the days! Or were they?