A Slightly Atypical Twenty-Six Year Relationship

I am on the verge of 62 years old. I am not married and never have been. Nevertheless, I have had the same woman in my life for 26 years. This woman, Diana, is now 55. We were a lot younger when we started out. I’m not sure if we’re ever going to get married. We have nothing against marriage; it’s just that marriage requires some kind of action. A marriage license needs to be purchased, and only specific individuals can perform the ceremony. See what I mean? If a person doesn’t really care about marriage one way or the other, why bother? That’s kind of been our view on it for the last 26 years.

There are more curious details to this 26 year relationship than being unmarried. For example; Diana and I don’t live together. We sleep together most nights, but almost all of my clothes are at my condo, which is located a few miles from Diana’s modest house. I generally shower at my place too. When I come home from work, I come home to my place. I will watch TV and have a snack. About four days a week I drive over to her place in the evening where I will stay the night. I’ll drive to work from her place the next morning. This has been pretty much our scenario from the outset, lo these many years ago.

My place is distinctly mine, and Diana’s place is distinctly hers. When I am at her place I will go to her refrigerator without asking, and I can brew tea without getting permission, but I do not tell her what photos to display on her walls or what color furniture she should buy. It’s her home. I have mine. 

We do not have kids, of course. I don’t think it has ever been a consideration. I think we both like children, we simply have never wanted to have any of our own. Now at the age of 62, I can honestly say that I have never missed having kids. Of course a person generally misses only those things he has had and lost, not things he has never had.

I don’t look at our arrangement as strange or unusual, but I know that some people are puzzled by it. All I can say is that for 26 years Diana and I have been as happy as any couple in a long-term relationship, and happier than most. Still, I don’t know if I would recommend such an arrangement for most people. It takes either a pretty good dose of open-mindedness, or a big helping of stupidity. I’m not sure which. Maybe I’ll ask Diana when I see her this evening. 

Circa 1990

January 2013

     

New Normals

I am 61 years old and I have a Facebook account. I have occasionally gotten some good-natured flack for being on Facebook, flack coming from my peers and contemporaries. I generally tell them, good-naturedly, that I am now living in the 21^st Century, and I might as well do those things that have become part of this century. That usually ends the chiding.

On Facebook I sometimes respond to posts written by some Facebook friend. On rare occasion I will post something of my own. On those few occasions when I submit something, I have to stop and think about whether I really want to hit the POST button. See, I know that what I am posting will appear on the Facebook pages of others, and I don’t want to seem too forward. I mean, they might have important things to read.

When I look at the Facebook pages of younger individuals, such as people under the age of 30, I will often see the Facebook page of someone who submits several posts per day. One of these posts might state nothing more than “the newly-fallen snow is pretty”. Such a post could well be accompanied by a photo of a snow-covered driveway. Still another post might proclaim the purchase of a new toaster, along with a photograph of the appliance. These types of announcements are pretty common on Facebook.

And that’s just it; I don’t get it. I don’t see why anyone would bother to post such things. Granted, I am 61 years old, but even if Facebook had existed when I was 22 years-old, I still would not have been willing to publish ordinary occurrences and routine activates as if they had some significance. To me, it looks as though these younger individuals are egotistical and self-centered. That’s what it looks like. But frankly, I don’t believe that’s true.

See, I think it’s a generational thing. I think the “new normal” is to post such trivial things as the lunchtime consumption of a taco salad, or the purchase of new shoestrings. The “new normal” sees nothing wrong with sharing this type of trivial information, and consequently it has become socially appropriate to do so. That’s my theory.

It isn’t like it is the first “new normal” in the history of mankind. How about Women’s Suffrage in the early years of the 20^th Century? In my youth there were plenty of “new normals”. Heck, the 1960s were chock full of “new normals”, including sexual behavior, and civil rights. In fact, those “new normals” were far more profound and earth-shaking than people’s posting habits on Facebook.

I have wondered what my long departed father would say about the social changes that are a result of Facebook, Twitter, etc., and then I stop and realize that there is no need to wonder because, well, for all intents and purposes I have become my father. And more than any other “new normal”, that “new normal” has been tough getting used to.         

The 14 Year-Old Porn Peddler

As I start in on this it is about 9:30 on Sunday morning, so naturally my thinking turns to porn. Pornography practically oozes off the internet. I can Google “nude women” and see all kinds of bare stuff. If I’m particular, I can use the three words “stacked nude women” and get a monitor full of busty females, some posing, and some in action. It’s very easy. Too easy.

I’m 61 years old. Back when I was 13 and getting my first taste of porn, things were not so simple. A kid had to work for his pictures of naked girls. And even with work the pictures were usually lousy. Back in the day, the cream of the porn crop was Playboy. The girlie photos were airbrushed and sort of semi-real, but at least the models were attractive. The trouble was; Playboys were generally not out on the local pharmacy’s magazine rack where they would be accessible to the young, curious, newly pubescent guy, but rather up by the watchful eyes of the store's cashier. The magazines that were available on the racks were such dubious publications as Stag, and For Men Only. These were really cheap mags with grainy black and white photos of slightly overweight women displaying chubby legs and cleavage, but not much more. An adolescent boy had to develop a keen imagination to become enlivened by a Stag Magazine.

Just about my 14th birthday, I was walking down an alley when I came upon a trashcan containing about a dozen slightly worn Playboys. I felt as though God had sent me a pictorial treasure chest. I hurried the publications home and hid them in a box placed up in our garage’s rafters. Now and then over the following days I would climb a ladder, visit my stash, and leave the garage with a Playboy hidden under a shirt. I would show it to a friend and we would analyze the smiling, unclothed foldout. I eventually sold the entire library to an older kid for, as I recall, a whopping $3. I had never made so much money at one time. Now these years later I can honestly say that one of my earliest and most successful business ventures was in the peddling of pornography. Contrary to how others might label me, I have never thought of myself as particularly perverted or depraved. You see, I figure it was business, that’s all, just business.           

The Reaper

Well, it is 2013. I escaped 2012 alive and in good health. Not everyone I know who is my age did escape. One of them, Steve Sheridan, I knew back in elementary school when we were kids. He died in 2012 of leukemia at the age of 61. I am sorry Steve died but to be honest, I prefer he experience death as opposed to my experiencing it. I do not like the notion of death, which paradoxically, is why I’m writing this blog entry.

A couple of years ago another elementary school classmate died. His name was Bob Arnold. Bob and I occasionally got into trouble together back when we were kids. We were in the same Cub Scout den. A couple of times I visited his house for Scout meetings. He was perhaps the best cusser at Glenmont Elementary School during the early 1960s. When I saw in some online obituaries that Bob had died, I really felt saddened.

I kind of imagine all of my contemporaries lining up once annually about this time of year with The Grim Reaper walking down the line and putting his hand on a couple of shoulders, thereby selecting them for expiration during the forthcoming year. With every passing year the black-cloaked guy takes a few more of us than he did the year before. That is just the way it is with aging. There are things that can be done to make a person look less attractive to The Reaper, things such as a healthy diet and exercise, but in the end if Mr. Death wants you, you will feel his hand upon your shoulder.

I’d like to think The Reaper will once again pass me by for 2013, but of course I will not know for sure until I raise my champagne glass on December 31^st at 11:59 PM, assuming I will be here to raise it. Of course come next January the utterly pointless worry starts all over again. But I’ll tell you what; next year I won’t mention it, that is, given the chance.          

Mom's Birthday Candle

My mother was born on December 14^th 1918. One Saturday morning in early December 1961 my 7 year-old sister and I decided we needed to buy my mother a birthday present. We asked my mom for some money to buy her a gift and she reluctantly gave us $3 or $4. As luck would have it, my father had planned to do some Christmas shopping that day at Lazarus Department Store, located in downtown Columbus. With money in hand, my sister and I went along.

At the Lazarus front doors, we kids split up from my dad, promising to meet him later at some predetermined location. Over the next half hour or so the two of us explored a number of different store departments in search of the perfect birthday present for my mom. We looked at baseball gloves, ballet slippers, even cheap cuckoo clocks, but we found nothing that we both thought my mother would like. Then, like a miracle, my sister and I came upon an approximately four foot-tall, electric Christmas candle made of heavy-duty plastic. Down the side of the candle in big yellow letters was the word NOEL. We just knew my mother would love it.

We hid the candle in the garage until we could wrap it, complete with stick-on bow. A few days later, on my mother’s birthday, we presented her with our fabulous gift. To our utter shock, frustration surfaced upon my mom’s face the instant the candle was wrestled free of the wrapping paper. “This is not an appropriate gift for someone’s birthday,” she grumbled. She then pushed it away as she shook her head in agitation. I remember it like it was yesterday. My sister and I were crestfallen.

Over the years the candle became known as “Mom’s Birthday Candle”. It was never referred to as “The Christmas Candle”, or “The Noel Candle”. Never. The oversized candle with the light bulb inside the big, yellow, plastic flame was simply “Mom’s Birthday Candle”. And every Christmas for almost 50 years it could be found brightening my Mom’s porch. Now and then over the various holiday seasons my mother would journey outside to wipe off the candle with a rag, or replace a burned-out light bulb. And if the weather turned really foul, she would bring the candle inside to safety.

One December several years ago, a few months before my mother died, I was carrying the candle through the living room, bound for the front porch. Along the way I traveled by my mother as she relaxed in her favorite chair. “Time to set-out your birthday candle,” I said casually.

“I remember the first time I saw that candle,” my mother quietly stated. “I was angry.”

I stopped and turned towards her. “Yeah, I remember. Believe me, I remember.”

“It wasn’t just that you bought me a big, plastic candle, it’s that you used my money to buy it.”

“It was a dumb gift,” I admitted with a shrug and a grin.

“At first I thought it was the stupidest gift in the world,” my mother remarked, “but I’ve received a lot of birthday presents in my life, and the truth is, very few have come to mean more to me than that big candle. So maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t such a stupid gift after all.”

Mom, wherever you are, I just want you to know; this holiday season your birthday candle will be glowing.