Tony Deyal
AN 80-YEAR-OLD couple decided to spend their summer holidays apart for the first time in their married life - the wife went to Barbados and the husband went to Tobago.
A few days after arriving in Barbados, the wife got a terse email from her husband that read, 'Darling, arrived safely in sunny Tobago. I met a 20-year-old young lady and am having a wonderful time. Love, Bob.' The woman replied to her husband with this email, 'Darling, I met this 20-year-old lifeguard and am having a wonderful time as well. Love, Susan.' Then she added, "P.S. Remember that 20 can go into 80 more times than 80 can go into 20."
Everywhere in the world women are joyfully discovering the mathematical miracle that results from the combination of maturity, money and matrimony.
A recent Internet news report pointed out, "The proportion of women marrying 'toy boys' at least eight years younger than themselves has doubled in the past two decades, according to official figures. Some 10,000 women a year now fall into this category. Experts say the growth has been caused by a combination of female emancipation and well-paid careers giving women greater choice to follow their desires.
TOY BOY
"Four per cent of marriages now involve a woman at least eight years older than the man, showing that the phenomenon of the toy boy has broken out of the celebrity gossip pages into the wider population."
According to the report, the celebrity pairings of older women with younger men include Madonna, 47, who is almost 10 years older than Guy Ritchie, her film producer husband; Emma Thompson, the 46-year-old actress, who is seven years older than her actor-husband Greg Wise; and Ali Cockayne, 36, ex-girlfriend of Will Carling, the former England rugby captain, with Bob Parkinson, a 29-year-old chef whom she met at her local pub. While we can joke that Parkinson was on Cockayne at the time, what can we say about 43-year-old Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, aged 26? Were they punked?
It is fast becoming the norm for divorced women to marry younger men. Official British statistics show that three out of five remarriages of divorced women involved a younger husband. It has been postulated that younger men are now more likely to accept the consequences of female emancipation. They are increasingly willing to accommodate to a marriage in which they are not the main breadwinners and to which they bring few financial assets.
At the same time, the report points out, seven out of 10 women of working age in Britain are now employed and this increasing state of financial independence of women has allowed growing numbers to ignore the convention that a female opts for an older male to bring financial security and enhanced social status. For the divorced women, generous settlements facilitate remarriage to younger men.
MONEY
But is it all a matter of money? Is there genuine sentiment in those who praise older women? Television journalist Andy Rooney of '60 Minutes' says, "As I grow in age, I value older women most of all ... An older woman will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, 'What are you thinking?' She doesn't care what you think. An older woman knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom. Few women past the age of 50 give a damn what you might think about them. An older, single woman usually has had her fill of 'meaningful relationships' and 'commitment'. The last thing she needs in her life is another dopey, clingy, whiny, dependent lover."
They can also be very generous. Two travelling salesmen, Joe and Bob, ran into bad weather and had to seek shelter in a very well-kept farm owned by a widowed, older woman. A few months later, Joe called his buddy Bob and asked, "Remember that night when we were stuck in the storm and this widowed lady let us stay in her farmhouse?" Bob said that he remembered.
Joe then asked his friend, "Did you sneak into her room in the middle of the night and make love to her?" Bob admitted that he did. Joe persisted, "Now, tell me the truth, did you give her my name instead of yours?" Bob sheepishly conceded that he did. Then Joe laughed gleefully, "Well, thank you good buddy. I just got a letter from the lady's lawyer. She died and left me her farm and $10 million."
PINING OVER SEX
There are times, too, when the lady might be a little too old. An old lady was sitting on a park bench crying bitterly. A young woman passing by tried to console her by asking what the problem was. The old lady replied, "I have a 22-year-old husband at home. He makes love to me every morning and then gets up and makes me pancakes, sausage, fresh fruit and freshly ground, brewed coffee."
The young woman asked, "So why are you crying?" The old lady continued, "He makes me homemade soup for lunch and makes love to me half the afternoon. For dinner he makes me a gourmet meal with wine and my favourite desert and then makes love to me until 2:00 in the morning."
"I still don't understand why you're crying," the younger woman said. To which the old woman, crying even more loudly explained, "I can't remember where I live."
Tony Deyal was last seen asking what do you call a woman who knows where her husband is every night? A widow.
