by Kevin Burton
It’s Saturday baby, the day we’ve all been waiting for! You know what that means.
It’s date night!
But what does date night mean anymore?
Between Covid 19 safety measures and the new geezer bedtimes we’re learning to prefer, date night isn’t what it used to be.
Last week we celebrated Cinco de Mayo at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Derby. It was packed but by arriving around 5:15 we still had a short, 10-minute wait for a table.
Jeannette didn’t get her guacamole, I didn’t get my rice, but we let it go. It was Cinco, a big holiday in one of my adopted home towns. We were feeling the occasion.
Once we paid the bill though we headed for home. No movie afterward, no karaoke night, just some phone calls to follow up with relatives.
I had to work the next morning, Jeannette was off to Hutchinson help her mother.
I guess it’s possible if the moon were just right some night we could paint the house red. But the town if painted at all would be something in a beige or a nice pale green.
The website geekandjock.com has some ideas for date night for people over 50. Some of them are good but they didn’t approach the idea the right way.
The headline speaks of “staying young together” as if there is no merit in growing old together. Staying active I’ll buy. But nobody stays young, those who pretend to, more often than not make a joke of themselves.
The article also asked “should dating ever be over?” Of course not. They say there is no such thing as a bad question, but some are much better than others.
We took care of a few date nights last weekend by going to our town’s citywide garage sale.
Our house is seriously over-cluttered so we went to the garage sales with a strict list to stick to. We were looking for a Keurig coffee maker for me to use at work and a power strip with a long cord.
That we did not stick to this list should be no surprise to anyone. (We ordered the power strip from Amazon and I will do without the Keurig).
The treasures we did find speaks to date night.
My favorite is a three-piece VHS set of railroad tours of North America, produced by Reader’s Digest. We have already watched three of the six tours.
We also found two CDS of old-time radio shows. The detective shows include The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective. The Mystery shows include an Inner Sanctum Mysteries episode called “The Blood of Cain.” Four hours of programming altogether. I’m sure we’ll break that up over several rainy days and nights.
We also got a VHS copy of “The River,” a movie starring Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek about a rural couple struggling to save their farm. I’m less interested in this. It was a maybe purchase that turned into a yes. You know how garage sales are.
Much more interesting to me is the movie “God’s Not Dead: We The People.” We’ll be renting that one soon.
Just got a DVD on Fats Domino. We’ll work that one in too.
We have not given up on travel and a night on the town if we can do those things safely and still meet our increased family obligations. . In fact we are actively watching for something like that.
The best idea I found on adventurebook.com, going up in a hot air balloon, gets a flat out veto from Jeannette. I know that without asking. Volunteering in the community could happen, maybe at the animal shelter where we got our two cats.
Jeannette says “just going for a drive,” sounds fun and it does, even though gas prices are high.
“Hop in the car, turn the music up and just act like kids.” Jeannette said.
Taking a class sounds good, not dancing please, maybe cooking, language.
Re-creating your first date? There’s a cool idea. Maybe other selected dates. One of our first dates involved karaoke. I really miss my karaoke.
It’s probably time to take another deep dive into the current Covid science as we continue to assess what is safe and what isn’t. Unfortunately in doing that we have to factor in idiots who “have their rights’ and seem to glory in making everyone unsafe.
Memphis still beacons the Burtons. We’ve been talking about Memphis since before we got married.
Maybe we make an exception and paint Memphis red. Otherwise, mostly earth tones and early nights.
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