That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for February 11, 2022

“Every morning, you come to breakfast dressed like a widow, and every morning I disappoint you.”

“Tell me the truth Helen, have you been fooling around with the gardener again?”

/// Many years ago, George Bernard Shaw

was so shy that from girls he’d withdraw.

Twenty-nine and a virgin

he gave in to the urgin’

of a widow who helped him unthaw.

/// Jenny then was a young thirty-seven.

She taught G.B.S. how to reach heaven.

Their affair had been splendid.

Decades after it ended,

they meet up for a breakfast in Devon.

/// She had followed him all over Britain.

Seen herself in each play he had written.

“Bernard, it seems to me

that I’m owed a large fee.”

He regretted he’d ever been smitten.

(The above story begins more or less accurately, and then quickly veers into complete fiction.)

I’ll be back in a bit – got to see a man about a dog. And I’m going to take the paper as well – it’s the financial section, and if the stock market tanked again, it’s doing double duty, so to speak.

Simon explains to Ethel what ‘Bukkake’ means.

“Gerda, thank you for telling me yet again that long story about your sisters and the blueberries. For the first time I see the positive aspects of encroaching deafness.”

Does she look like she cares?

To look at his silvery head,

And the journal still largely unread,

You’d never suspect

That the lady is “wrecked”

For the man is a tiger in bed.

Age hasn’t slowed him in the least..

He remains a lecherous beast,

His diet? Viagra..

A bloomin’ Niagara

Of the stuff – it has only increased..

/// On his birthdays they had a tradition—

they had sex (not confined to coition).

He is eighty today

so she sat down to say,

“Here’s a no-no note from my physician.”

So she patiently lies on her back

Knowing well that the brute is on track

And she only needs wait

Til her suff’rings abate

When he croaks of a huge heart attack…

That is similar to the way Einstein treated his wife.

I sit this way Gertrude, so that I can tell the wagging tongues at the club that we’re just friends and I certainly don’t have “my feet under the table”.

Before dementia – when people were just considered to be crazy: “For the third time Doris, look for yourself, I am NOT listed in the obituary column, so will you please stop wearing mourning dresses. It’s becoming embarrassing.”

“After living on this earth for 80 years, you still believe if it’s printed in the paper it’s true? Please!”

Now they only have oral sex, which means they just talk about it.

“ i’m sorry, Thusnelda, but the market has collapsed. All our savings are gone, and you must return to streetwalking.“

if i ever get another dog i want to name it frühstücktisch…

“I just don’t think “Far Side” is funny"

“That’s it, we’re thru.”

“Esmerelda my dear, one of us needs to have a diaper change, and I’m pretty sure sit’s not me!…..and No!, I will not recite you any limericks about the man from Nantucket!”

Note that look of terror in her eyes!

Eloise, you know it’s my week to wear the beard. So back off!

Look at these results from China. I tell you, the Olympic alpine skiing is just going downhill fast.

Come to think of it, they’re panhandling, too. They all bought Austrian war bonds.

TCSTHAFED was better than Garfield today.

She gave him the look that says, “It isn’t safe to do that at your age.” as he leaned over in his chair to pass gas.

Helen, there is an article in today’s paper about a women found dead sitting in a chair for two years. Helen. Helen? Helen, did you hear me?

It’s mornings like this that Magda hates. The horny old bugger she’s been married to for 50 years, is too cheap to go to a brothel.

“You want to have a kid at your age?”

Yeah. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves…..

“You serve me a bagel when you know I’ve lost my dentures!”

Even "resting b!tch-face couldn’t make him shut up…

BERNARD: “I thought I needed a shave but I guess not. And where did I get that hat? And when did I get so ugly???”

EVA: You’re “mirror” joke no longer amuses me, Bernard.

Damn, but I can’t sit down comfortably after that caning you gave me last night at the fet party!

FBRRRAAAPPPPPPPP

“Oh, that was a good one. Happy Valentine’s Day, my dear.”

So you can forget about getting a Valentine from me…got that?

Oh, god a granny walker!

“Today’s Kreuzworträtsel is a tough one. What’s a 31-letter word meaning ‘food intolerance’? Stars with ‘N’, and the 22nd letter is ‘ä.’”

Elderly couple at the breakfast table: 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_Johann_Spielter_-_%C3%84lteres_Paar_am_Fr%C3%BChst%C3%BCckstisch.jpg 

(best viewed using Google Chrome, which can automatically translate most webpages if necessary) has info and links that point to more info about this painting.

 

Again, a larger strip image is shown by (Ctrl- or right-) clicking the image at 

https://thatispricelessblog.com/2022/02/masterpiece-2876-2 

and using the dropdown menu (even larger if you trim what’s after .png from the URL). I have added a comment there pointing to the artist info I used to point to here. So far 5 works, by this artist, have been used here. 

https://www.gocomics.com/that-is-priceless/2021/12/21?comments=visible 

has the prior.

Each was sure the other would lose, but after eight hours of this staring contest, they realized neither could move.

What’s going on in the lower corners of this picture? Fractured reality?

“No, no, I’m certain that we’ve met somewhere before! It’ll come to me…”

Breakfast with Herr and Frau Alzheimer

“Dammit, woman, when I suggested we play ’Hide the Sausage,” I meant later. Where did you put my Weißwurst?!?"

Sigmund Freud telling Hortense, “sometimes a hat is just a hat

“Guess what? Your horoscope DOESN’T say ‘Today is a good day to bust your husband’s balls’!”

“No, that’s not it. Let me get my coat and pants off and I’ll show you a Freudian Slip.”

Actually, this is rather touching. They are still both present, together so late in life. Sooner or later, one will be alone…

“No, I DON’T have a second wife up at the North Pole. But that’s where my job is, and I HAVE to spend a lot of time there!”

See, it says right here that beards make a man sexier.

even though Evelyn has been dead for 7 years, Archibald still reads the morning paper each day. the first year he had to back away a bit from her.

How long do we have to listen to him tune his lute? It feels like a couple of days now.

“If your mother doesn’t come back soon, I’m eating her muesli.”

Every morning well into his 90’s Fritz had breakfast with his mother, never ceasing to be impressed by the taxidermist’s skill.

It that Norman Bates ?

/// The man’s widow split open her head

when she ran from his coffin in dread.

Both now earthbound and haunting

one another with taunting.

(Neither knows that the other is dead.)