As we headed home from the chocolate shop I asked Flip, "Do you want me to carry the rest of your truffles in my purse?"
I licked my fingers on which a little dark chocolate dipped candied orange peel had melted.
"Can I trust you?"
"You married me. There is an assumption of trust."
He paused, then handed over the aromatic little gold Godiva bag, which I stuffed in with my wallet, keys and his other glasses.
Men only get married so they can use purses without carrying them.
"Are you sure you won't eat my chocolate?"
I shrugged. "If you died, I would eat your chocolate in a minute, no question. But you're still living. That changes everything."
"It warms my heart," he said.
He reminded me for the 5th or 6th time today that he is a good-looking guy. He claims that I never tell him so, which is not true, while he tells me "all the time" how good I look, also not true.
I finally put it to him. "Overweening ego and Alzheimer's is too much on the same plate. I can't deal with both, so take your pick."
He's thinking about it.
I softened the blow. "You are a good-looking guy," I said. "I'm lucky to be seen with you."
He got all misty.
"Of course, they don't know you're balmy."
As soon as we got home he turned on the television. Flip is on intimate terms with every "Law and Order" episode ever aired.
"Alzheimer's is in all the ads," he remarked.
"Oh, good. I'll take three."
I watched, too, for a minute. "It's becoming epidemic. It will be much more common in a few years as the boomers age. You're a pioneer, a trailblazer."
He studied the actor in the Aricept ad, who was much older than he is. "He's pretty good."
"You'll have to work hard to top that," I said.
Some of the commercials are really sneaky. They cut to them seamlessly and mimic the lighting in the shows, sucking you in before you can put the remote on mute. (And I do mean sucking.)
There is a test to let you know if you've been watching "Law & Order" too long:
If you see a woman's face with closed eyes and assume it's a cadaver but when you look more closely you realize it's an ad for face cream, you might have a problem. It makes me uneasy that I've grown so used to seeing dead bodies that I automatically process corpses over cosmetics.
There is also the matter of the very flowery commercial which shows a sweet-looking older woman getting married in a lovely gown and -- Depends. I think this scares me even more than becoming one of the corpses because if someone kills you, you're dead. It's over. But Depends is forever.
