Overall Wit & Wisdom

Bill Chitwood for Progressive Dairyman

My wife has had another birthday. I will have some fun for the next six months until I have my birthday and we are the same age again. We are both getting to the age at which we have so many aches and pains that if a new one comes today it will be a least two weeks before we can worry about it.

We have had a wonderful life together – all 53 years of it. My wife was on the debate team when she was in high school and college. In college, she and her debate partner won many a contest all over the country. When a debate team goes to a contest, its members have to be prepared to argue on both sides of the question they will be debating. So they do a lot of studying and take a lot of reference materials with them to the contests.

My wife was very good at debate. She had to be because her partner had not had the experiences she had, and my wife had to do most of the work. When you have had all that experience in debate and have been good at it, it is hard to just turn it off when the debate is over. She should have become a lawyer so she could have put that talent to good use. But what did she do? She married a dairy farmer and taught school for two years, after which she became a full-time mother to four children.

We had kids so fast that three of them were in diapers at the same time. They may have taken after me and been slow learners.

This talent of debating, being able to argue on both sides of a subject, was not a problem for the first 45 years of our marriage because I was so busy working with the cattle and the crops that I was not around the house much. When you leave the house about daylight, eat your lunch in the tractor and your supper watching the 10 o’clock news, you get along okay.

In the last few years, I have slowed down and most days I am around the house more than I have ever been, and it has caused a problem, but we have turned it into a game. Whatever I say, her natural reaction is to always take the other side and show me where I am wrong. So the game we play is to try to keep track of the times (and they do not happen very often) when she says, “You know, you may be right.” I may start marking them on the calendar.

Through these 53 years together, and her ability to show me I am wrong, I have developed a knack for not showing I am wrong in order to keep the game going a little longer.

Sometimes this gets me in trouble. For example, the other day we were on a road trip and stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. After finishing our meal, we left the restaurant and resumed our trip.

After we had been driving about 20 minutes, my wife said that she could not find her glasses. She must have left them back at the restaurant, so we needed to turn around and go back to get them.

Well, we were on an interstate highway and you can’t turn around just anywhere, so we had to drive about 10 miles farther to find a place to turn around. During that time, you can just imagine how mad I was and the fit I threw because I knew I had her this time. I didn’t let up for one minute.

Finally, we got back to the restaurant, and she got out of the car to go inside to retrieve her glasses. I yelled at her, “While you’re in there, you might as well get my hat and credit card.”

I’ve heard it said that eventually you reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it. Well, we are about there.

There are some good things about old age. Have you noticed the older you get the fewer things seem to be worth waiting in line for?

Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me – I want people to know why I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and some of the roads I’ve been on weren’t even paved.

Ah, being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.

If you don’t learn to laugh at trouble, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you are old. Keep smiling. PD