"A Chore Thing"

By Jerry Zezima

When it comes to household chores, I work for free. And I’m worth every penny.

But since I’m on a fixed income, I am thinking of charging for my services.

“You don’t do anything,” said my wife, Sue, who is the family banker.

“That’s not true,” I replied defensively.

“What do you do, take out the garbage?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “And I clean the bathroom. And do the dishes. And get the mail.”

“How long does it take to get the mail, a minute?” Sue said.

“Time is money,” I responded, using an old business axiom, which is derived from the Latin word “axioma,” meaning “feeble excuse.”

I got the idea to charge for chores after seeing a lawn sign by some enterprising individual who wanted to get paid for putting up other people’s Christmas lights.

“Maybe I should get paid for putting up our lights,” I suggested.

“You mean throwing a few strands on the bushes out front?” Sue said incredulously.

“Yes,” I said. “And for plugging them in.”

“You’re ridiculous,” she stated.

“That’s my job,” I countered.

My job used to include outside chores like cutting the grass, but Sue fired me because I didn’t trim the edges of the yard to her satisfaction, so she hired a landscaping company.

“How could I get fired from a job I did for free?” I asked.

“The landscapers are worth the money,” Sue assured me.

I didn’t put up much of a fight because I didn’t like cutting the grass anyway. Or raking leaves. Or shoveling snow.

“If I got paid for lying in a hammock, I’d be a millionaire,” I noted.

“Take out the garbage,” Sue said.

“I’m not supposed to do that anymore,” I replied.

“Says who?” she wanted to know.

“A nurse in the cardiologist’s office,” I told her.

I was referring to Annemarie, who called to give me the results of a recent CAT scan, which was taken to find out the status of my aortic aneurysm.

About a year ago, I was scheduled to have open-heart surgery because the aneurysm was thought to be large enough to operate on. A subsequent scan showed that I didn’t need surgery after all.

But this latest scan indicated that the aneurysm had grown and should be monitored.

“You have restrictions,” Annemarie told me.

“Like what?” I wondered.

“No heavy lifting,” she said. “Not even a case of water.”

“How about a case of beer?” I inquired.

“Not that, either,” Annemarie said.

“Can I do 12-ounce curls?” I asked.

“If you’re thirsty,” she said. “A full wineglass is all right, too.”

“Red wine is over-the-counter heart medicine,” I pointed out.

Then we got down to household chores.

“How about taking out the garbage?” I inquired.

“Not if it’s too heavy,” Annemarie said. “And no heavy laundry baskets.”

“I don’t do laundry,” I said. “My wife thinks I’ll break the washing machine.”

“My husband doesn’t do laundry, either,” she said.

“Does he do other household chores?” I asked.

“Some,” Annemarie answered.

“Does he want to get paid for them?” I wondered.

“Are you kidding?” she spluttered. “I’d never pay him. Besides, he’s scheduled to have open-heart surgery, so he can’t do much anyway.”

“My wife is a cardiac patient, too,” I said. “She had a heart attack a few years ago, but she’s doing very well.”

“And she does most of the household chores?” Annmarie asked.

“Yes,” I confessed.

“Then you should pay her,” she said.

“I can’t,” I said. “I don’t have any money.”

“Money isn’t everything,” Annmarie said. “And it proves one thing.”

“What’s that?” I wondered.

“You’re a lucky man,” she said. “So do what you can to help your wife. After all, like most wives, she’s priceless.”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima

"The 2025 Zezima Family Christmas Letter"

By Jerry Zezima

Since I am in the holiday spirit (and, having just consumed a mug of hot toddy, a glass of eggnog and a nip of cheer, the holiday spirits are in me), I have decided to follow in that great tradition of boring everyone silly by writing a Christmas letter.

That is why I am pleased as punch (which I also drank) to present the following chronicle of the Zezima family, which includes Jerry, the patriarch, and Sue, the matriarch, as well as two daughtersiarch, two sons-in-lawiarch, five grandchildreniarch and a partridge in a pear tree.

Dear friends:

It sure has been an eventful 2025 for the Zezimas!

The year got off to a “ruff” start with the adoption of a puppy named Opal, a sweet, smart and sassy Chihuahua who has captured the hearts (as well as the fingers and toes, which she likes to nibble on) of everyone in the family, especially Jerry and Sue’s younger daughter, the doggy’s human mommy. Opal’s human sisters and her human daddy love her, too, and they are all proud that Opal graduated from obedience school, which is where everyone wishes Jerry would go.

That’s because he has done some incredibly stupid things this year.

One of the craziest was his attempt to buy a lighthouse. Because the historic structure needed work, and Jerry is the least handy man in America, and it was up for auction with the bidding starting at $100,000, and Sue told Jerry he couldn’t go over $25,000, and the winning bid was $370,000, Jerry lost out on a chance to replace Johnny Depp as the star of the next “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie.

It was proof, if any were needed, that Jerry is lightheaded.

He proved it again when he bought an air horn to rupture the eardrums of scammers who call incessantly and won’t take no for an answer. At least it didn’t cost as much as a lighthouse. Price: $7.99.

Jerry said he’s loud and proud. Sue still thinks he’s full of hot air.

Speaking of loud, Jerry’s constant snoring prompted him — at the urging of Sue — to enroll in a sleep study that found he has apnea at levels high enough to be recorded on the Richter scale. So he got a CPAP machine, which was designed to stop his overnight rumbling and save Sue from fixing the problem by means of asphyxiation. The machine worked for one night, after which Jerry stopped using it. He hasn’t snored since.

Jerry found that being a grandfather can be magical — as long as you don’t end up in jail. That’s the lesson he learned when he and Sue got together with all five grandchildren (and the kids’ parents) for a week in which Jerry assisted in science experiments performed with a magic wand, ran around a playground to the point of collapse, was served a delicious dinner of popcorn and Honey Nut Cheerios, engaged in battles with a kung fu master and was arrested multiple times by the world’s youngest cop.

He pleaded immaturity and was released on his own recognizance because the children, who are more grown up than Jerry, don’t yet know what recognizance is.

Jerry learned that old can be gold when he and Sue attended their 50th reunion at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont, where they were in the notorious (thanks to Jerry and his pal Tim Lovelette) class of 1975. They met the school’s new president, who resisted the urge to revoke Jerry’s diploma after learning that he graduated magna cum lager. A good time was had by all.

Jerry marked the 40th anniversary of his syndicated humor column, which is distributed to hundreds of papers nationwide and abroad. If you have ever wondered why the newspaper industry is in trouble, it would be because of Jerry.

Last but certainly least, Jerry’s eighth book, “The More the Merrier: Laughing at Life When Everyone Thinks You’re Over the Hill,” was published. Like his other books, it’s a crime against literature. It also comes in handy for propping up wobbly table legs. And if you suffer from insomnia, you might even want to read it. Just ask Santa, who will be happy to stuff your stocking with a copy of this alleged masterpiece. Ho, ho, ho!

Merry Christmas with love and laughter from the Zezimas.

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima

"Plate Expectations"

By Jerry Zezima

I may not be the chief cook in my house (that would be my wife, Sue, without whom I would have starved to death long ago), but I am the chief bottle washer.

And I don’t wash only bottles. I also clean glasses, mugs, cups, saucers, bowls, plates, pots, pans, tongs, whisks, spatulas, ladles, forks, knives, spoons and, most important, ice cream scoops.

And I have the dishpan hands to prove it.

But help has arrived: We just got a new bottom rack for our dishwasher.

We needed it because, for many months, it was the best of tines, it was the worst of tines.

I refer to the plastic spikes that hold dishes so they don’t collapse, forcing the chief bottle washer to clean them himself and end up with hands rougher than the hide of a geriatric crocodile with a severe case of eczema — which, perhaps not coincidentally, rhymes with Zezima.

The problem was that the tines in the back of the bottom rack would keel over every time I tried to put a bowl between them. That’s because the clips that held the tines had fallen off and couldn’t be snapped back into place without the use of a jackhammer, which probably would have broken the bowls, sent knives flying past my head and destroyed the entire dishwasher.

So I had to settle for getting almost no use out of that side of the bottom rack and running the recalcitrant appliance so often that the water bill rivaled the gross national product of Finland.

This raised three questions:

1) How much would a new dishwasher cost?

2) How could two people go through so many dishes each day?

3) How come I don’t wear rubber gloves so my hands won’t become chapped, waterlogged or a deadly combination that prevents me from feeding myself?

The answer to the first question: Way too much.

The answer to the second question: Who knows? Neither of us is a glutton, although Sue’s cooking is superb, so maybe our cups and saucers are engaging in extracurricular activities and multiplying overnight in the dishwasher, leading to this shocking headline:

THE DISH ON SCANDAL

Steamy doings have hapless hubby in hot water

The answer to the third question: Because I’m too stupid to protect my hands so a daily deluge won’t rot them to the bone.

Other dishwashing dilemmas include the question of whether knives and forks should be put up or down in the cutlery basket. It’s like whether toilet paper should go over the top or under the bottom of the roller or whether the toilet seat should be up or down.

Even with all that’s going on in the world, these are among the most important issues facing a married couple, especially if the lesser half happens to be yours truly.

On that note, there is the conundrum about loading and unloading the dishwasher and whether, as is often claimed by the better half of a married couple, no man knows how to do either one properly.

The former because he can’t economize when arranging glasses and mugs on the top or bowls and plates on the bottom; the latter because he likely doesn’t know, even after decades of living in the house, where anything goes.

So Sue, tired of listening to me curse up a storm at a maddening contraption, ordered a new bottom rack.

She called the manufacturer and got the best deal possible: It was free.

The rack arrived a few days later and has ensured peace in the kitchen. Now I can put bowls between the tines without suffering an attack of apoplexy.

Next up: Buying a pair of rubber gloves. Then I’ll really be a hands-on bottle washer.

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima

"Seeing Is Believing"

By Jerry Zezima

For a double-visionary like me, the daily dilemma is not whether I can’t find my eyeglasses, in which case I would need a pair in order to find them, but why I forgot to bring them upstairs so I can see well enough to write drivel like this.

Until a few months ago, the only glasses I needed were the kind that hold beer or wine. Then I discovered I was farsighted, not to the point of being able predict the winning Powerball numbers, but being unable to clearly see things that were up close, such as letters that appeared to be fruit flies, tiny Volkswagen Beetles or the symbols for chemicals like boron.

That made it difficult to read what I was writing, which may actually have improved it.

So I got a pair of “readers,” which are nonprescription glasses so cheap that the price won’t knock your eyes out.

My wife, Sue, has what she estimates are “90 pairs” of readers scattered around the house, though I would put the number at no more than six dozen.

While my readers enabled me to see much better when I was reading or writing, they presented two problems:

1. They turned out to be women’s glasses.

2. I would always forget to bring them upstairs (to write columns and delete emails urging me to buy eyeglasses) or downstairs (to read the comics and peruse bills that I would throw out anyway).

The first problem was discovered by my two adult daughters, who wear glasses themselves. They and their mother were sitting at the kitchen table as I was catching up on the latest sports scores.

I soon heard chuckling. I looked up and saw three blurry people because my readers were not meant for distance.

“What’s the matter?” I wondered.

“You’re wearing women’s glasses!” one of my daughters said.

“No, I’m not,” I insisted, explaining that I had gone to CVS and gotten my readers from the men’s stand.

“A woman who didn’t want them probably put them there by mistake,” my other daughter said.

I turned to Sue and asked, “Are they right?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, very likely because she was wearing the wrong glasses.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Who’s going to see them anyhow?”

But I began to worry about the second problem: I was risking cardiac arrest by constantly having to go up and down the stairs to fetch my glasses.

“I need more glasses,” I told Sue.

“Let’s go online,” she suggested.

I had to put on my readers to see the selections that appeared on the screen.

“Are these men’s glasses?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Sue. “See, it says so right here, next to the picture of a man wearing glasses.”

“They’re very fashionable,” I said.

“And you get a three-pack for only $19.99,” Sue pointed out.

“I’m worth every penny,” I said. “Let’s order them.”

The glasses arrived two days later. I opened the box and tried on a pair.

“What do you think?” I asked Sue.

She had to take off her reading glasses and put on a pair for distance to see my new readers.

“They look really nice!” she said approvingly. “Can you see better?”

I looked at my phone and said, “Perfectly.”

“Where are you going to put them?” Sue wondered.

“I’ll put a pair in the kitchen and one upstairs in my office,” I said.

“What about the third pair?” she asked.

“Maybe I’ll put them in the bathroom,” I said. “It’s where I do some of my best reading.”

“And they’re men’s glasses,” Sue pointed out.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m a vision in them.”

Sue rolled her bespectacled eyes.

“You have to admit,” I said, “these new glasses really give me specs appeal.”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima