So this 75 year old dude re-proprosed to his 75 year old ex wife.
At WallyWorld.
It may not sound super romantic – being in WalMart and all – but that’s where she worked. So, in a way, I guess it kinda was, because he wanted all her friends to see and make a fuss over her and stuff afterward. Thing is, they’d been divorced for about 43 years when he popped this V-day proposish to her. And although she’s feigning “hard to get”, she says she will take him back. ‘cause “he’s a good man”.
You know, usually I’d adhere to that one meme that’s going around likening the act of taking back your ex lover to collecting bits of your own defecation after expelling it from your body and thusly trying to return it into the orifice from whence it emerged.
(Yeah. That’s the one.)
But the thing, I suppose is that the rules change a bit when you get on in age.
I myself have never been 75 before (though I feel a lot like I am today), so I can’t genuinely pretend to know what goes on in a septuagenarian brain (aside from maybe the thought “Who the fcck is that?” every time you look in the mirror because you still perceive your image as your ideal self to cope with life and the fact that it’s nearly over). But if I had to guess, I’d say that at least a good handful of old folk still crave love in some form. In fact, I used to have this (retrospectively semi-pedophilic and you’ll see why) government teacher who was old enough to have grey hair. And he’d reference that grey hair with this one liner that he’d repeatedly say (mostly because he was also old enough to forget that he said it so much that if it ever were funny to begin with, it wasn’t anymore, and the only people laughing were those who wanted an “A”.) And the line went thusly:
“There may be ashes in the chimney, but there’s still a fire in the furnace!”
The creepier part was how he’d look out at us after with that “aaah?!” expression.
(Reminds me of the epic list of bad dad jokes out there)
(A good time? How much’va good time can you have at ColdStone? NVM. Go on…)
I love how really old men look like farting babies when they laugh at their own jokes.
As for my still-old-but-not-old-as-gif-guy-above teacher, really? What reaction could you possibly be expecting from a bunch of kids – half of whom probably hadn’t even gotten laid yet and aren’t old like you so they can’t relate on any level? Looking back, I can’t imagine – though I rack my brains trying – what possible scenario could have possibly ensued in a high school classroom to warrant that level of TMI once, much less several times. But my guess (and I’m really giving homie and his spittle ridden mouth corners the benefit of the doubt here) is that he was just old and lonely which does weird shit to your brain until eventually you start making inappropriate comments as a poor attempt to connect with the only people you probably ever see. Even though they haven’t even been alive for two full decades yet. If anything, that was likely even more of an attractive factor – not necessarily in a Chester kindofa way. I think it was more of that nostalgia-for-your-own-youth kindofa way that I’m told gets stronger as you get older.
Sometimes the aging end up being drawn to youth. (Hopefully in a grandfatherly-but-not-the-kind-of-grandfather-that-ends-up-on-Dr.-Phil-for-an-incest-confession-episode-with-his-face-blacked-out kinda way). And sometimes the aging end up being drawn to remnants of their own youth. Like who they dated when they too were younger. Even at my non-70-something age, I’m already experiencing this. Once he turned 30, my high school boyfriend started intermittently issuing me a drunken call every several months (presumably between girlfriends), saying he’s listening to “our songs” while slurring out a romanticized narrative of our history – each recollection sounding less like our actual past than the one before, and more like that one story from the Notebook.
(If the senile lady had been the one charged with telling it.)
So, I get it, I guess – why old people bother getting hitched. These two wrinkly love birds are just doing what comes natch for those planning out their epitaphs and writing out their wills for the vultures they co-propagated. ‘cause when the end of your world’s suddenly in clear view, all the mistakes of your past, how he never flushed the fcking toilet, or why you both decided to divorce …. suddenly matters less.
All you wanna do is grab the arthritic hand of someone you love, and hold on till it happens.
Presumably, so you can shove ’em in front of you when the Grim Reaper comes, and say “TAKE HIM INSTEAD!”
(Little does everyone know the front’a that sign actually reads “Let’s wed before we’re wormfood”)