70-Year-Old Spousal Warranty

INSTITUTE FOR SPOUSAL HEALTH

THE MAYO CLINIC

ROCHESTER, MINNESOTA 55902

Dr. Nancy -----------

Address on file

Dear Dr. --------------,

Under the terms of your nuptial agreement, The Institute for Spousal Health has performed the scheduled 70-year maintenance and service as described in the warranty agreement governing your spouse, d.o.b. 12-14-1950, d.o.m. 08-15-1981.

On behalf of the Institute for Spousal Health, let me congratulate you on your spouse achieving this milestone. Without the active intervention of their spouses, most men of this age would find themselves on the brink of catastrophic failure.

We also appreciate your bringing your spouse to us for measurement and observation as requested in your warranty. In summary, his condition is good despite some obvious gaps, and he is likely to provide several more years of spousal comfort if managed appropriately. And remember, rest, exercise, and a healthy diet will give him his best chance at wellness, and a healthy coat.

These notes summarize our findings.

Your husband is now 73.75 inches tall. We note that he was 74.8 inches tall some while ago, and we calculate we will be about 72 inches, a reasonable value, upon termination, if we can get him to stand up straight. Please keep in mind your spouse getting smaller reflects physical reality, not your subjective impressions..

A good measure of health for spouses in this age group is the Carlson-Hannity Symptom Index. The Index is calculated by counting those illnesses from which the spouse reports suffering from and for which medications are advertised on the Six O’clock Fox News Special Report with Bret Baier. Your spouse’s score on this index places him in the 60th percentile for symptom manifestation and hypochondria. We recommend a series of restorative, distracting comments on your part such as “What do these politicians know?,” “Is it cold in here?” and “Who are the (insert sports team of interest) playing on Sunday?

An additional gauge that sheds light on your spouse’s condition is the Jenner-West Bloviation Score. The first component of this measurement is the Kramden-Norton Opinionation Pyramid, which awards specific scores to different classes of matters on which the spouse expresses deeply-held opinions, in proportion to their severity, where:

· opinions on the weather, how much things cost, and rap music are awarded one point;

· opinions on lawn maintenance, asymmetric haircuts, and how poorly people drive nowadays two points;

· opinions on Metamucil flavors, the use of “r,” “u,” “b,” “2,” and “4,” instead of English words in text messages, and the effect of one’s diet on one’s A1C level three points;

· opinions on two- versus three-button suitcoats, why the best Stones guitarist was Mick Taylor, and how come two steps no longer means traveling in the NBA, four points;

· opinions on how the new and old Perry Masons could not be the same person, grammatical errors by television newscasters (including split infinitives and that/which, can/may, and irony/paradox confusions), and ’61 Yankees versus ’76 Reds, who was better? five points.

The spouse’s score on the Opinionation Pyramid is then multiplied by the spouse’s Powerll-Giuliani Expression Number, which awards scores on how those opinions are expressed, where :

· muttering under one’s breath equals one point;

· remarking in front of company at the dinner table, two points;

· angry Facebook posts in capital letters, three points;

· mentioning in a conversation with the next person on the supermarket checkout line, four points;

· tirades made to plumbers, electricians, meter readers, and perfect strangers five points.

Warren’s total score of 12 indicates moderate opinionation, a level that can be addressed through behavioral therapy, including strict application of the phrase, “No one cares, dear.” But even in the extreme, opinionation is one of the few medical conditions that can be addressed by ignoring it, although this approach can take decades. Levels above 15 require medication and an immediate cessation of all newspapers, social media, and other external stimuli, all of which aggravate the underlying condition. (In an emergency, the score can be roughly estimated by counting the number of “Hey Boomer!”s the patient experiences over the course of 24 hours.)

We then administered the Empty Room Cognitive Assessment to your spouse, in which we place the spouse in an empty room and observe the time it takes the spouse to determine what he’s doing there. In your spouse’s case, this took two minutes, the 35th percentile response. His confusion level, therefore, is not critical, but merits ongoing observation. The Empty Room Assessment correlates with higher scores the Supermarket List Completion Score, values for the Lost Phone Radius (for which “Oh, it’s right here!” warrants cautious monitoring), and the spouse’s Unzipped Fly Quotient.

Sleep is an essential part of your spouse’s maintenance. We calculate your spouse sleeps ten hours a day. Unfortunately, four of these hours take place during meals, television programming, book reading, and conversations with family members experiencing emotional distress. A further measure of the quality of your spouse’s sleep is the Sleep/Wake Decibel Ratio. This measure calculates the average decibel level of all noises emitted by the spouse (whether vocal, respiratory, digestive, or intestinal in origin) during sleep and during wakefulness and calculating the ratio of the two. Your spouse’s score of 1.3 indicates he is thirty percent louder when sleeping than when awake, roughly average for spouses in his age group. On a positive note, it would be worse if he snored.

Finally, your spouse performed well on the Cognitive Superiority Assessment, in which we tell the spouse to remember five words – man, woman, person, camera, TV – and then ask the words be recalled after a few minutes of distracting conversation. Of course, any adult without a severe mental impairment can recall these words – the test for our purposes is not the recollection of these words but rather the spouse’s reaction after completion. Your spouse’s response upon completion (“I told you I was smarter than that idiot.”) is considered completely normal.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if your spouse exhibits new and disturbing manifestations. Which will probably be soon.

With every best wish,