I was quietly reading the paper the other day when Elsbeth came by my chair and said she believed her left hip was feeling better.

She had gotten a cortisone shot the week before. She sidled up and asked if I could detect any reduction in the swollen spot where they stuck her with a needle .

I checked. Hmm, I said, in my best doctor voice.

I told her that in order to give her an accurate reading, I would have to make a medical exam of the opposite hip. I was not about to shoot from the hip, so to speak. Note: I never claimed to be a doctor, though I did hang out at the soda fountain at Olberg's Drug store in White Center, reading Scrooge McDuck comics.

"Not on your tintype, big boy," she shouted. "I don't see any diploma on the wall. Not until we get married."

I shrugged. My tintype has been missing for years.

She keeps reminding me that I had hired a guy I met in Pioneer Square 40 years ago, paid him five bucks and had him turn his collar around. And he had hitchhiked out to White Center just in time to pretend to marry us.

He was pretty good, though he hung around the champagne fountain all afternoon, tried to date my sister, who was already married, and passed his hat around the room nine times.

But he only foozled a couple of lines. Like when he asked me, "Do you Gerald Rabbitson fake this woman, Imogene to be your awful wedded life?

I was only fooling around when I said "Maybe." Luckily, she didn't hear it.

Actually, we had a real minister. But Elsbeth likes to tell her friends at the pinochle club that we are just going together.

Whenever I turn on the light in the middle of the night so I can use the facilities, it wakes her up and then she gets up, too. Sometimes we meet in the hallway.

Usually she wants to discuss my bank account.

"How's your balance?" she says.

I don't know why she is so concerned about my fiscal condition in the middle of the night. So I try to change the subject. Usually I say something compassionate like, "Let me check that hip. I believe it's looking much better."

Dr. Gerald Robinson moonlights as a newspaper publisher of this paper that he doesn't really own, according to his five sons, at any rate.