Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

I believe that all men of that certain age (myself included) and married for half-a-century should not be allowed out of the house unless accompanied by their wives. First of all, if it weren't for our better halves telling us to make a right at the next stop sign, most of us would wind up circling the neighborhood three times before finding the stadium-sized Walmart we've been filling our prescriptions at for the past decade. Sure we fancy ourselves intrepid explorers, but even Christopher Columbus would have come home empty handed if he wound up at the Sharper Image trying to fill a scrip for Lipitor.

And can we talk about facial recognition? It’s a well-documented fact that the average man can pick out Winston Churchill as a two-year-old toddler in a nursery photograph, but we never seem to realize that the person in front of us in line at the deli is the same guy we played tennis or golf with last week. Our wives, on the other hand, have no trouble with bumping into someone in the airport and nudging us with, “Why you remember Mrs. Gerbson, dear, she sat behind us on the bus during our Grand Canyon tour in ’88.” Yeah, sure.

But now we guys are being confronted with new challenges and right here in our own homes. Just the other day my wife asked me to answer the phone while she was upstairs blow-drying her hair. Sounds simple enough, but between her cell, my cell and two landlines, I felt like I was left alone in the air traffic control booth without a manual.

I was relaxing in my Lazy-Boy when her cell phone rang. I sprang into action, and five minutes later I was actually out of the chair and holding the device in my hand. I flipped it open and said hello at the top of my lungs six or seven times, before I remembered that her phone didn't operate like mine. You didn't answer simply by opening it. By the time I figured it out, my phone was ringing too.

Alas, the caller on my wife's phone had hung up before I managed to connect. So I ran to find my cell, which I did in a thrice, but too late. This time the caller left a message, but I couldn't see who it was as I didn't have my reading glasses. Before I could find them the landline rang: I made a dash for it and actually answered on time. It was my wife’s sister explaining that she just called Marilyn’s cell but didn’t leave a message because she knows I have trouble retrieving messages (true). I guess I was so exasperated that I raised my voice a bit trying to explain all the trouble she caused (she had difficulty following me), which is when my wife made her entrance from upstairs, asking: “What the heck is going on? Sounds like World War III.” I explained the sequence of events (not my fault, really) and asked if she saw my reading glasses anywhere because I think I have a message on my cell.

“Give me the phone, dear,” she said with a smile. “I’ll check out the message. You check out the History Channel; I think a documentary on Churchill’s early years in India is on tonight.”

Epilogue: The message on my cell was from the restaurant confirming our dinner reservations for that night. We both had roasted chicken.