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evenings with the History Channel or curling up with a good book (the Best Buy catalog counts). If my husband had his way, New Year’s Eve would be spent getting the transmission fluid checked on our car, Valentine’s Day reseeding the lawn, and Christmas morning the perfect time to shampoo the carpets.
    His main problem with holidays is he doesn’t like crowds. According to him, two’s company and three’s an unlawful assembly. So since the Fourth of July meant crowds, we did laundry.
    Unbeknownst to us, though, the parking lot of the Laundromat happened to be the ideal location for local residents to watch the city’s fireworks display. While we were busy fluffing and folding, cars began filing into the parking lot one by one, staking claim on the spaces with the best views. Not that all those people were in for any more excitement than we were going to experience inside the Laundromat. Until you’ve watched a Maytag hit the spin cycle and start shaking in time to ‘‘God Bless America’’ being played over the Laundromat TV, you haven’t celebrated the Fourth of July. And if one of the dryers happens to develop an electrical short and the sparks start to fly, well, even Bob Hope would have a hard time beating a finale like that.
    So there we were celebrating the Fourth of July in style. No, we wouldn’t be seeing the Blue Angels in a flyby (although there were a couple of wasps inside that were putting on quite a show). There wouldn’t be a marching band or rockets going off or even sparklers. It was just the two of us with a pocketful of quarters and five loads of laundry needing to be done.
    Now that I look back on it, it was a pretty enjoyable evening. We actually got to see some of the fireworks through the reflections in the washing machine portholes, and my husband found a quarter behind one of the chairs. As Yakov Smirnoff would say, ‘‘What a country!’’

    YOU KNOW YOU’RE
GETTING OLD WHEN . . .
    you start buying Geritol by the six-pack.

16

Thanks for the Memory . . . Loss
    Memory is another thing that dulls with age. But more importantly, memory is another thing that dulls with age. As you grow older, you’ll find yourself repeating things and forgetting where you put your glasses, your car keys, your checkbook . . . your teeth. I heard of one older gentleman who looked all over the house for his dentures. He finally found them hours later when he sat down on his sofa. Imagine explaining that one to the emergency room team: ‘‘I don’t care if it is physically impossible, doctor, I’m telling you the truth. The bite was self-inflicted.’’
    We all know the negatives about losing our memory, but believe it or not, there are some positives. For one thing, think of all the new cars you get to drive home.
    ‘‘Whaddya mean we don’t own a Lexus, honey? It was parked in the same parking space I distinctly remember parking in. It’s got to be our car!’’
    One night you get to drive home a Lexus, the next night a Suburban, the next night a BMW convertible. For some reason, though, if you find a Yugo parked in your spot, your memory usually comes back to you.
    Another plus to memory loss is the fact that there always seems to be more money in your checkbook than there should be. That’s because you don’t remember to record amounts written and to whom. I’m still working off the deposits I made six months ago. I think I’ve spent the same money five or six times. Maybe that’s why my bank keeps sending me all those letters . . . and here all this time I thought they were just being neighborly!
    There are other good things about losing your memory. When your memory goes, your Christmas list gets cut in half. ‘‘How many kids did you say we had again?’’
    And without a good memory, you only have to mail in your taxes every other April 15 or whenever you happen to remember you’ve got an Uncle Sam. That alone should take some of the sting out of aging.
    You even start visiting