Anybody reading this who’s around my age can probably remember when we were shocked to learn a man had married a woman older than he. When I was a kid and that happened, it was just the dadblamedest most juicy piece of gossip absolutely ever, and I swear I’ve never used “dadblamedest” ever before in my entire life. But it was. We could not stop talking about it. It was shocking, unthinkable, nearly as disgraceful as, gasp, a couple getting a divorce. But a man marrying an older woman? And even worse, a much older woman? The world as we knew it was crumbling about us and we were loving every thin thread of the salacious, delicious scandal.

When I was in junior high, a young rookie bachelor social studies teacher boarded with the widowed mother of a school chum of mine. Mr. J. was way, way younger than Mrs. H, but in time, they found they could not bear living three floors apart, so Mr. J. moved downstairs into Mrs. H’s good parlor and other rooms, and they actually married! Right in that very same good parlor. It was really hard after that in social studies to concentrate on Mr. J’s droning about the United Nations when we (thought we) knew what was really going on in Mrs. H’s home. Oh, it was just plain delicious.

Tonight, I watched that wonderful old melodramatic, flowery and grandiloquent “Wuthering Heights” with the gloriously hammy Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. Now, that was film making! But it reminded me that Merle had shocked everyone (Isn’t “shocked” a stupid word to use? Like we all feel some charge of electricity blasting through us when we hear some unimportant but fascinating news.) because she went and found herself a fella named Robert Wolders. Shocked everyone (OK, not everyone) at age 63, by marrying a man who was 38. Barely out of diapers. Amazing! Merle was a serious looker and probably didn’t have age spots, wattles, a mustache and missing teeth. Well, maybe she did, but who noticed? Or cared? No one I know. Robert didn’t. She was marbled beauty in “Wuthering Heights,” tiny, flawless, Dresden porcelain. Her Heathcliff was dark and brooding with dark, brooding sexy eyes covered by lowered dark, brooding and sexy eyelids. Olivier was just beyond description. Heaven to watch and hear. Yummy.

I don’t know anything about Mr. Wolders. But he was Merle’s spouse #4 and the longest lasting, considering she upped and died five years later, leaving Wolders a sobbing widower, although likely one with really great memories and maybe a few bucks.

Remember Martha Raye? She was no Merle Oberon for sure but she did have one gorgeous set of legs. Huge canoe-like mouth, loud voice, a wildly energetic performer, singer, dancer, actress, and she entertained everyone on stage, radio, TV and film, and most importantly, the soldiers and sailors of WWII. No slouch when it came to men, she at age 76 snagged one Mark Harris, a mere lad of 43. Hey, the guy may have had ulterior, aka financial, motives but our Martha cared little for public opinion and she disenjoyed being alone. Turns out Mark wasn’t doing anything special, so a couple of weeks after they met, they eloped and a couple of years after that, Martha went to that great proscenium arch in the sky, having not given a hoot before, during and probably after. You go, girl!

And then we have good old reliable Cher. Nothing much surprises anyone about that lady, me most of all. She’s funny and irreverent and probably was the one who owned the chalk when she and her childhood friends proposed writing dirty words on the sidewalk. So, it won’t come as a huge surprise that one of her multiple swains, a guy named Robert Camilletti was born when Cher was 23 years old. Even though they talked about it between Cher’s three Band Aid gigs, they never actually married. He’d been grounded by his parents for staying out past curfew and couldn’t get to the justice of the peace on time. OK, I joke. Maybe.

I well remember when in my 40s, an old family friend, well into her cups, “confessed” to me that my mother was 2 years older than my father when they wed but they kept the scandal a deep secret. Oh, how we struggle so with stupidity.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I mean, in relationships like that, are things sort of, like kind of, I mean, normal? Yeah, you’re right. What’s normal? Who am I to ask or to judge or even to wonder? But I do and I am curious and oh, come on, you are, too. But hey ladies, men have been courting and marrying women their grandchildren could be having playdates with, and all it’s elicited from society is a wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Now it’s our turn to do the winking and nudging. Are you a little longer in the tooth than you’d like to be? And spousally unencumbered at the moment? Take a good long look at that juicy young pool man, accountant, recent college grad, groundskeeper, mechanic, jockey, intern, furnace installer, Boy Scout leader or carpenter. He just may be looking back!

LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer. You can reach her at lcvs@comcast.net.