Relationships 12/02/22

So it’s already December. Where does the time go, and how come we keep getting older each year? Anyway, this week we start a 5-part series on our confirmed bachelor, Craig, and the new “love of his life,” Cynthia. Our guess is we all know someone like Craig. Good looking, intelligent, fit. And the question is: why does he or she remain single? Is it because they want to be single? Or is it because they haven’t met the right person yet? Or are they unwilling to compromise? John and I have each been married almost 40 years, so we are not the best examples. But what about Craig, is he ready to take the plunge? I was once a single guy around 27 or 28 and met a girl who was interviewing at a place I used to work. I saw her lingering in the hallway and struck up a conversation and there was an immediate chemistry. So I asked her out on a date. She was of a similar age and she had been through enough failed romances that she wasn’t messing around anymore. She knew what she wanted (at least she thought she did) and if you didn't meet her checklist, you were toast. Of course I didn't know any of this until I arrived at her apartment for our first (and last) date. She greeted me at the front door and before she put her coat on to go outside, she handed me a list. A literal list of all the qualities she sought in a man she’d be willing to have a relationship with. I kid you not. The lucky man would have to (now this was a long time ago, so my memory’s a bit foggy) love pets, not smoke cigarettes, not drink to excess, be neat, enjoy long walks in nature, etc. For those of you who know me, I don’t respond well to people giving me orders. And yes, I still smoked a pack every 2 or 3 days. Not much, but enough to disqualify me. By the way, I officially stopped smoking on June1, 1986, the day my daughter (my first child) was born, but I was being given a list the second I walked in the door and didn't like it. What I did is sit down in a chair and read the list. Then I pulled a fresh pack of cigarettes out of my jacket and proceeded to hit the front of the pack against my palm, packing the tobacco. She said, “What are you doing?” I explained I was a light smoker and also that I hadn’t grown up with a pet and so was not a natural with dogs. She asked me to please put the cigarettes away and I said, “I don’t think this is gonna work out.” She full-heartedly agreed and we never even went to dinner. True story. But the point is, the older you get, the more rigid you become in your ways. It was Match.com before Match.com existed.

I’m reminded of the Pina Colada song where a bored husband responds to a classified ad saying, “if you like Pina Coladas, taking walks in the rain…” the guy answers the ad saying he loves all those things and plans to meet surreptitiously in a bar at midnight. When he gets there he finally meets the woman who wrote the ad, his wife. Or as Joni Mitchell once brilliantly wrote, “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you want ‘til it’s gone?” When you’re in your 60’s you think you know what you want, like Craig thinks he knows and Cynthia thinks she knows. Will she be the one? Will Craig listen to his heart instead of his head? Stay tuned. There’s three more comics coming.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week as the road trip continues.

Andy and John

Keeping (sorta) Fit 11/17/22

Our exercise series this week starts with a comic about fitness watches in general. An Apple Watch, a FitBit, or the Google and Samsung equivalents. The idea about these damn, stupid, I mean watches are that they give you gentle reminders to get off your ass and start walking, weight lifting, counting calories, etc. It gets particularly annoying when you’re driving a car or flying in a plane, going to a theater for a show or a movie and the watch tells you, time to get up and move. A short 5-minute walk will get you closer to your “stand goal”. And what is a stand goal, pray tell? You have to stand for a certain amount of minutes each hour. Well, I can’t stand in a theater. What would the people behind me say (probably not much since I’m only 5’6”)? The thing is most healthy people look at a watch deliverring a message as only a minor annoyance. Not yours truly. I shout at it. “I’m driving damnit! Why don’t you earn another hour to your stand goal? I’m just trying to not get into a car accident, is that okay, you dumb watch?” After I broke my ankle this summer I put my Apple Watch in a drawer and never wore it again until I was healed. Everyday there were these messages: “You’re usually much further along by this time of the day.” And I’d look at my “move ring” and see it say that I’d achieved only 1 minute of exercise that day. I switched to my old normal watch, the kind that only tells time, instead. I remember John telling me about chopping down a dead tree in his yard to then chop into firewood. It’s hard, physical work, but halfway through the process he noticed he had forgotten to wear his watch. Hence, he got no credit (at least as far as the watch was concerned) for any physical activity, when in fact he had done a tremendous amount of aerobic and strength training, only he was chopping wood. I am prone to thinking like that myself. I once in a while forget to wear the damn thing and find myself on a 4-mile walk. But my watch thinks I’ve moved 3 steps that particular day. And yet, as soon as I recovered from the ankle and started hiking 2 then 3 then 4 miles a day, I went right back to my annoying digital watch. I wanted to get credit for my exercise. Finally, we ask the existential question of all fitness watches: If you chop a tree down in the forest and forget to record it on your watch, does it really count?

Our next effort was about a date. And our single character, Craig, was scoping out a potential new woman friend who seemed athletic, which he liked. But maybe she was a little too athletic as Craig realized she would kick his ass in the game of squash. Now this thought came from discussing a couple of my youthful experiences I shared with John. I once met a girl at a gym, and we made a date to play racquetball. I had to use every bit of my strength and speed to barely beat her. I don’t think she was very impressed, which is probably why she refused a second date (this time, just dinner with no athletic competition). Another antic occurred when I played a couple of seasons of co-ed softball in my late 50’s. I was standing on third base, attempting to run home when the batter hits a ball to the short fielder (in co-ed softball you usually play with 4 outfielders instead of the traditional 3) and teams usually put their weaker players at that position. Not this team and not this woman. The fly ball was hit, she retreated a few steps, and then started running in towards the ball. She caught it on the run and threw a perfect strike to home plate. If I had run from third, I would have been out by 20 feet. After the inning, I asked her if she played in college, and without missing a beat she said, Yep, starting center fielder at Notre Dame. Okay then. I played intramural sports. Does that count? John, however, was an honest to goodness varsity soccer player, so there. But I digress. As liberated as we like to think of ourselves, most guys don’t like losing to women, even if the woman is 10 times better than he is. There, I’ve said it, so shoot me. Whaddya want? I’m in my 60’!

Enjoy this beautiful, if cold, late fall weather and we’ll see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John