Old guys rule

Toy not with the master. (iPhone photo by BobbaLew.)

As you all know, my beloved wife died six years ago.
I still miss her immensely.
She was the best friend I ever had. She actually liked me. After my childhood I needed that.
We were both Houghton College Class of 1966. Together with Houghton, my turnaround began.
That funky little podunk college, out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, was the first religious institution that solicited and valued my opinions. Instead of automatically declaring me rebellious and of-the-Devil.
Then there was my wife-to-be, Linda, who chased me all through college. I wasn’t aware until my senior year, when two fellow-students told me.
Linda was appalled. She was very shy.
We ended up marrying, despite fervent badmouthing. “What does she ever see in him? He’s not blond.” (Gasp!)
44&1/2 years, proving the badmouthers wrong.
Now I’m alone again. My wife is gone.
One of my college classmates also lost his wife, and almost immediately remarried. I’m not interested. I suppose if someone as interesting as my wife came along, I might reconsider. I don’t expect that.
I’m more interested in what a widow friend is doing: hang with someone to shoot the breeze. Marriage is for youngsters. I’m way beyond that. That widow lives by herself.
I been alone over six years. It’s irksome at times, but I’m not lonely. Much to the disbelief of many, I’m not bored. I’ve always been able to entertain myself: railfaning, photography, cars, computing, and especially writing. I drove friends nuts in college: “How can he be happy by himself?”
My counselor tells me I’m lucky to have so many interests. Many retirees had only their job. To me a job only supported my interests.
The Mighty Mezz was great because it melded computering and writing. The Messenger made recovery from a stroke possible.
There were bumps, but I decided to stick with my wife — my so-called “old sock.”
My wife worried about me; she covered for my stroke defects, especially difficulty making phonecalls. She felt she needed to find a replacement. We lined up friends to parry the hairballs; e.g. our financial advisor, who became my financial advisor.
Shortly after my wife died the IRS dunned me $27,000. I mentioned it in passing, and that financial advisor sprang into action. He suggested a friend refile my income-tax.
End of $27,000.
I also corralled others to solve problems.
The other day my sneakers got soaked walking my dog in wet grass. I put on spare sneakers, but wanted to dry the wet ones. Our (my) dryer had a means of drying sneakers without tumbling, but I didn’t know how.
Clueless-as-always (I graduated college), no longer having a wife to cheer me on. I texted my cleaning-lady to stand in for my wife. I guessed there was a way to operate my dryer without rotating its drum.
She had no idea, so engage guile-and-cunning. I dragged out our sneaker thingy, and noticed it hung from the door-opening — that is, the drum-tub rotated, but the thingy didn’t.
I used to need my wife around to suggest this stuff, or hold my hand so I could see things myself = “ah-hah” moments I was unworthy of because I was rebellious and of-the-Devil.
I have to get used to “ah-hah” deduced on-my-own. 74 years on this planet, so late.

• I graduated “Houghton College,” in western New York, with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college.
• Re: “He’s not blond......” —My wife’s mother, a real pill, lined up my wife with a blond weirdo my wife hated. My wife was supposed to marry a blond to offset mousy hair. (I’m not kidding, readers.)
• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over 12 years ago. Best job I ever had — I was employed there almost 10 years — over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern. (“Canandaigua” is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)