Like most couples, we tend to fall into a routine. We both work, so there's not a whole lot of time for variety. When we come home, we have dinner, watch TV, and go to bed. On Fridays, however, we tend to spice things up. That is, if you call dinner and a movie spice.
In any event, here's an idea of how a typical Friday unfolds:
I'll call my wife at work and we'll go over the movie schedule to try to find something we'd both enjoy. Then, after work, we each drive over to the theater. I get there early to buy the tickets. When we get inside, my wife asks me if I remembered to get the senior discount, and I tell her I forgot.
We look for seats that aren't too close to the screen or the speakers and settle in. If it's a very exciting movie, our catnaps tend to be a lot shorter.
After the movie, we get into my car and drive to a restaurant. We ask for a table that isn't too close to the TV screen or the speakers. My wife reads me the menu because I forgot my glasses. She orders her choice, and I order mine.
Our routine requires that we each eat half our dinners, then switch plates.
The practice means that on occasion we might wind up with something that is not exactly to our liking, but we like to live on the edge.
Over dinner, we discuss our work day and then try to catch each other up on the parts of the movie we slept through.
We pass on dessert, opting instead to drive over to the local yogurt shop. On the way, my wife asks me if I remembered to get the senior discount at the restaurant. I tell her I forgot.
At the yogurt shop, we taste a couple of the flavors and decide the samples were sufficiently filling.
We get into the car to drive home. On the way, my wife asks me if I got a senior discount at the yogurt shop. I remind her we only ate the samples. She asks me if there were any in particular I liked. I tell her I liked the peach. She tells me I only sampled chocolate and strawberry.
We lament about how much we ate, and swear we won't do that again, at least not until next Friday.
We arrive home, open the garage, and notice my wife's car is missing. We panic for just a few minutes until we remember we left her car at the theater.
So we drive back to get her car. On the way, we get a phone call from our neighbor informing us that we left the garage door open. She kindly offers to close it, only she has to go through the house to exit because she's 82 and the last time she tried to scramble out before the garage door closed, she almost lost a leg.
When she enters the house, the alarm goes off, leaving her and the police to hash things out.
We arrive home and slide into bed. My wife asks me whether we had a good time. I tell her I'm almost certain we did. We kiss goodnight and go to sleep.
Irv Erdos of Escondido is a freelance columnist. Contact him at IrvErdos@aol.com.
