Carol’s Column

Is later life just, well, a set of spare parts?

“I’M NOT married to a man — I’m married to a series of spare parts,” a good friend of mine said recently.

I detected a certain desperation in her tone.

“He gets up in the morning, after he’s relocated his dislocated back.

“Puts on his contact lenses so that he can see where he’s placed his false teeth.

“Then he jumps out of bed, attaches his hearing aid to his left ear and finally chooses which style toupée he’s going to wear that day.”

I was suitably sympathetic. I fluttered my false eyelashes, adjusted my left falsie which had slipped down and hooked itself into my new Pucci glitter belt and made sympathetic noises into the phone.

“Don’t worry,” I murmured soothingly, “it’s just his age.”

“You’ve got to be joking,” she screeched. “If he’s like this at 35 what the hang’s he going to be like when he’s 40? I’ll have to resemble him every morning.”

There was a pause.

“Are you listening to me?” she asked, an aggrieved tone to her voice.

“Of course I am. I was just hunting for one of my new stick-on nails — it slipped behind the phone table.

“Hang on, the puppy’s swallowed it. I’ve got to ring off now, I must get that nail back — it cost a fortune.”

She’s right, I thought to myself as I put down the receiver and chased the puppy.

Which didn’t really help anyway — by now the nail was probably travelling at top speed through her alimentary canal en route to greater things.

As I brushed my teeth, I noticed the one cap had slipped giving my face a somewhat Dracula-like appearance.

“So, nobody’s perfect,” I muttered as I pushed it back into position.

Later that morning at the book club meeting, I was fascinated to learn that among eight of us we had approximately 94 spare parts.

Eyelashes, falsies, wigs, teeth, contact lenses, glasses, reformed noses, steel pins in aged hip joints, nails — the list was endless and formidable.

Agatha Crumpet had even had her derrière reshaped and filled with a new real-to-the-feel synthetic gel.

Agatha was outspoken about her spare parts. “If you don’t like what you’ve got, change it,” she said. “Get new ones.”

Ella agreed. “Look around you, Carol, have a good look at what you see. Most people are made up of spare parts here and there.”

That night, I took a long and critical look at my husband as we sat at the dinner table chatting about the relevancies of life. Such as the lifestyle of a hamster or whether fish could fly.

Tonight it was my turn at the head of the table. A truly democratic partnership, we alternated position every night.

Mind you — it was a recent decision, one made jointly by me and my inner self ever since I’d read ‘Are you a down-trodden doormat or are you an assertive partner?’

Through my spectacles — I have this embarrassing habit of losing my contact lenses in my soup — I observed my spouse.

The man of my dreams.

The one to whom I’d plighted my troth and promised to stay with through thick and thin.

He was still pretty wholesome even with all his spare parts.

His glasses, the caps on his teeth, the little bit of extra they’d stuck in his spine to keep it from ‘flipping and flopping’.

But, on balance, the rest of him was all his — quite an achievement for a middle-aged man of action.

I smiled quietly to myself and paid him a compliment — a rare occurrence.

The experts say one should exercise restraint within a marriage, too much flattery encourages complacency.

“You’re looking great,” I said.

There was a stunned silence and then he retorted: “But you look terrible — why don’t you do something about it.”

So I did.

I’ve ordered a total set of spare parts. From top to toe.

“By the time I’ve finished with you, Mrs Lazar,” said the plastic surgeon I consulted, “you’ll be a new woman. Even your husband won’t recognise you.”

So what? I’ll order a spare one of those too.

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