“I don’t want a baked potato,” I tell her. Little did I know where it would all lead me. My wife and I are having our coffee in bed, as we make our grocery list for our upcoming camping trip.
“Why? We need a potato with our steak dinner,” my wife says. 
“I just don’t want a baked potato,” I reinterate.” Geez, I’m thinking that we’re going camping, who eats a baked potato on a camping trip. Besides, there’s so many better ways to consume a potato.
She’s incredulous, scowling, her eyes examining me, like for a defect.
“I’ve never liked them all that well,” I confess.
“Yes you did.” She’s thoughtful for a moment, then says, “Have you noticed that the older you get the more stubborn you are about what you will eat? You’ve regressed.”
“I have not! You say that just because I don’t want a damned baked potato.”
“Chinese food,” she blurts out, “you used to be happy to go out for Chinese food. Now, when I say let’s have Chinese, you wrinkle your nose. Even though, on the few occasions you do give in it, you think it tastes good.”
“I have never been big on Chinese food. I just eat it to please you.”
“So now you don’t want to please me by eating a baked potato with your steak?”
“Uh.” I realize I’ve sunk into the marriage muck up to my hips. How to extract myself? She’s staring at me, waiting. “I will concede,” I tell her, “that as I get older, I realize time is limited, and I am less likely to do eat something or do something I don’t like or want to do.”
“Exactly,” she says, triumphant. “A kid turns her nose up when asked to eat something that’s good for her and digs her heels in when she doesn’t feel like doing something. Another sign that you’re regressing.”
“I’m just being more selective. That’s a sign of maturity, not childlikeness.”
“Do you notice you’ve lost your censor, you just about say anything that comes into your head, like a little kid before she learns what she shouldn’t mention?”
“I’ve always been like that.”
“I guess you right. Your censor has always been…well, set on low. But I think it’s getting worse, like ready to shut off.
“Speaking my mind keeps me from getting an ulcer.”
“And I suppose not doing or going to places that bore you keeps you from stomach ailments as well? Like, for instance, when I want to take in a botanical garden.”
“What? I always go…when you can’t find someone else to go with you.”
“Yes, when I have no one else to go with me, and after I remind you that I watch football with you even though I’m not interested in football.”
“This isn’t a situational equivalency, because when you watch football with me, you play games on your computer, or draw. And when I’m at a garden, there’s nothing else for me to do. I—”
“You never used to complain.”
“I have done a lot of things I could have complained about but I didn’t because I’m not a complainer, I say.”
“You are now, about a potato!”
And that’s another thing that confirms my belief. As you get older, you regress and become a complainer about what you eat or what you do.”
I’m frowning at her and her hypothesis that I’m regressing, year-by-year, back to my childhood. When in fact, I know that I’m merely selective and wiser in my life selections—again, it’s the time-limited concept I’m in touch with.
“Another thing that confirms my observations of your regression, you don’t care if your socks are matched.”
“I simply don’t find that important, and besides I don’t have to match them, you insist on my socks finding their rightful mates—a little persnickety if you ask me.” I don’t say anal, that would really piss her off.
“But do you notice how many little kids don’t match their socks.”
“I didn’t put my shoes on the wrong feet, did I?” I’m referring to her wearing her flip-flops on the wrong feet for several hours before she noticed—and she claims to have sensitive feet that can’t bear to have seams in her socks.
“That’s what I mean, I’m getting older too. You’re just older than me and are more regressed.”
“Humph, I wonder who’s going to monitor you?” I say, and apparently I won’t because I’m too childlike already, and who knows how bad I’ll be in a few years.” I grab our grocery list and head off to the grocery store to get our food for our trip.
The first morning in our camper:
“I have a new way of looking at your regression,” my wife informs, again over coffee, this time in our camper bed.
“Really?” God, here we go again.
“Yes, now I see it in a more spiritual way.”
“I’m all ears.”
“It’s the cycle of life,” she says, like a returnee from a spiritual quest with the Dali Lama. 
“Before you are born, you’re an essence that goes into a newborn’s body and grows into maturity, and then begins to sink…”
I don’t like the word, “sink.” I can’t see this new enlightenment regarding my regression getting any better for me.
“…back into a childhood state, and then eventually the essence leaves the body.”
“So now that I’m an essence, you’re feeling better about me, right?” I think her grief cycle has moved to acceptance.
She smiles and nods. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve become more stubborn…and more and more regressed.
I can’t wait until she realizes I bought hash browns, yesterday, and not baked potatoes for our dinner tonight.
(For more: Scroll down to: “Night Visitors and Un-kept promises.”)