Dennis McCarthy has the day off. Here is a “Best of Dennis” column originally published on May 25, 1993 with the headline ‘No age limit on romance,’ in the Los Angeles Daily News.
Rose Dorman, 103, elbowed Ann Abrams, 84, at the breakfast table last December, whispering a few words that would turn the widow’s world upside down.
“See that fella?” Rose said, nodding at a nearby table in the dining room at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda. “He’s got a crush on you.”
“What are you talking about, Rose?” Ann said, dropping her fork into her eggs.
“I’m telling you, he’s got a crush on you,” Rose whispered again. “I can tell.”
“What do you know about crushes at your age?” Ann said, smiling as she picked her fork back up.
“Hey, we had crushes back in the 1800s, too,” Rose answered, feigning indignation.
Ann Abrams laughed, turning her head slightly to catch a glimpse of Hy “Spike” Spikel, 84, smiling at her like a lovesick schoolboy.
“By golly, he is looking at me,” Ann thought to herself, avoiding the stare of this young whippersnapper giving her the eye.
Five hundred people sit down for breakfast every morning in this dining room, Ann knew — 475 women and 25 men. What were the odds? Nah, no way. The guy’s just being friendly to all the ladies, that’s all.
She was wrong. Spike Spikel says he’d had his eye on the dish at the next table for a few months, trying to work up the courage to talk to her. He could tell by eavesdropping on the conversation at her table that she was a woman with a good heart, plenty of compassion, who liked to laugh at stupid jokes.
Spike had no shortage of stupid jokes he liked to spread around the home to liven things up.
After you’ve been married for 59 years to the same woman who you lost after a long, painful final year of daily hospital visits, laughter and friendship were the only elixir that seemed to work anymore, the only thing that made him want to continue…
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