The Geezer Please

© 2004 copyright Raymond C. Evans

I’m one of the lucky ones; I’m married to a real “geezer pleaser”. She takes good care of me no matter what I do or say. Oh, sometimes I give her cause to frown a little but after thirty-eight years I pretty much know how far I can go. And I also spend quite a bit of time and expertise in repairing the damage if I’ve gone too far.

She even gives me moral support in my writing, not the easiest thing to do considering that she was a language teacher before she retired. She was just trying to be tactful, but after thirty-eight years you can hear the little things she didn’t say between the things she said. Was that last sentence a clear statement? I thought it was, but I may be the only one who thought so.

“Not everyone has the same sense of humor as you do”, she said. She was just being tactful but I could see “thank goodness for that” written across her eyes. I could tell she thought that if I wasn’t more careful I could still lose some more friends. She was just trying to be helpful; she knows I don’t have all that many left as it is.

I guess I’m just feeling sorry for myself today, I’ve grown accustomed to people avoiding me, it’s almost as if they are afraid I might flash some pictures on them of my grandkids or something. It’s just that I can’t help telling stories of yesteryear. Most folks tolerate them pretty well, but after repeating myself three or four times, I guess I could hardly blame them. But what’s an old geezer like me to do? I can easily remember what happened fifty years ago, I have a good long term memory. It’s my short term memory that’s giving me trouble; ------it ran off looking for my long term memory and never returned. -------I just can’t remember if I told the same story to a fellow day before yesterday or not. This makes it all especially difficult if the story comes out a little different each time. What’s an “old geezer” to do anyway? What’s an “old geezer” to do anyway? Well there I go, doing it again!

I’ll just have to be a little more careful what I write from now on, I guess, Joy’s intuitions are seldom wrong. Joy is my number one “geezer pleaser” and I know that I should heed her opinions about such things. “Reminds me of a joke I heard one time that went like this: “If I said something way out in the woods and my wife was not there to hear me, was I still wrong?”

But I’m really not kidding when I say, “I’m really one of the lucky ones, and I’m married to a “geezer pleaser extraordinaire”. I thank God every day for that.