I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office when I saw, encapsulated in the space of three seconds, a marriage I wouldn't want. A woman in her seventies was shuffling out from having seen the doctor, to the window where you have to pay for your visit. As soon as she was within sight of her husband, who was waiting in the lobby, she barked, "Getcher coat on." Then she turned her attention to the secretary.
He quietly put his coat on and shuffled over to join her, and together they fussed and mused over the new phone number for the office that was posted on the window, trying to figure out whether it was the same one they had written down. (It was, but they went back and forth for several minutes confirming it, in the slow, muddled way of old people.)
They've probably been married for fifty years, twice as long as I've been alive, so it's not my place to say anything about their relationship. But I hope my marriage never degenerates to that level of disdain. It just made me sad.
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