Ask A Genius 1369: Navigating Relationships and Aging, or Lost Vases and Long-Haul Flights
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/05/10
Rick Rosner recounts a familiar tension in his long-term relationship with Carole: she occasionally donates or discards items he values—most recently a large crystal vase he loved. After a frustrating realization it was gone before Mother’s Day, they clashed, but he found a similar vase online for $40 and chose to replace it rather than stay angry. Rosner also describes the physical challenges of flying in his mid-sixties, sharing travel hacks like choosing Virgin’s Economy Delight for extra space and even exercising in-flight. Despite discomforts—and one disastrous vegan pizza—he and Carole have learned how to make long-haul flights bearable.
Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.
Rick Rosner: So, Carole and I have this thing—something you sometimes see in a small but important percentage of relationships—where one person, who might be a bit of a hoarder (or maybe not), holds onto stuff, and the other person throws things away that the first person does not want thrown away. That has happened between Carole and me for, well, pretty much our entire time together.
We had this beautiful, oversized crystal vase. The base was frosted glass, shaped like roses. It was a striking piece.
And I loved it—even though, as a stereotypically “manly man,” I am not supposed to care about decorative vases. But I did. Moreover, I caught Carole trying to donate it to charity because it takes up much space—it’s a big damn vase. I told her, “Do not do that. I like that vase.”
She said okay and didn’t donate it, at least, not then.
Now, I don’t exactly do routine checks on our vase inventory. But with Mother’s Day coming up soon in the U.S., I needed a vase to fill with flowers. I looked for that big beautiful vase and suddenly realized: it was gone.
I spent hours searching the entire house, and it’s just… not here. Carole must have forgotten. She must have looked at it and thought, Wow, that’s big. It takes up space. There’s a chip on the bottom. And she must have given it away, despite me saying not to.
I felt that familiar surge of anger—not rage, just that rising internal pressure when you’re mad and frustrated and your body feels tight. Your blood pressure spikes.
So, we had one of those moments today.
I said, “I specifically asked you not to give away that vase.”
And she said, “I hate this.” And I get it—because it happens. This dynamic repeats itself. Maybe once a year. Perhaps every 18 months.
About a third of the time, I end up being the asshole, because I accuse her of tossing something, and it turns out I’m the one who misplaced it or forgot where I put it. And I’ve got a good memory for where I put things, so when something is gone, I notice.
So, I’d say I have a decent track record of catching Carole when she either throws something out or donates it, moves it somewhere, forgets, and then swears she never touched it.
Anyway, that’s the pattern.
Carole tried to make peace. She said, “If I did give it away, maybe it’s out there somewhere, being appreciated by another family.”
I said, “Yeah, well, I didn’t want that.”
Then she said, “Look, if it matters that much to you, let’s just replace it. We’ll find the same vase and repurchase it.”
That response bugged me, but eventually I thought: If this is what it takes to let go of the frustration, fine—I’ll look.
I think I tracked it down. I found the same or a very similar vase on eBay for $145 plus $22 shipping.
And I thought… No.
That’s too much money to spend to stop being an asshole. But I found—still from the same company—a different version. They merged the frosted rose base with a shallower but wider bowl. It’s about 14 inches across, 5 inches deep, held up by the same frosted roses.
Maybe not as pretty a design as the big-ass vase, but it was $40 on eBay.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: For $40?
Rosner: Yeah. For $40, I can spend that to quit being such a fucking dipshit about shit. So I went ahead and bought it. That’s going to be my Father’s Day gift to myself. And then I’ll fucking fill it with flowers. So it’s a win-win—except that I was still an asshole.
But also, she shouldn’t give away my shit—especially when I say, “Don’t give away my shit.” Though I went through the whole house and, to be fair, we have a ton of fucking shit.
Carole was the sole surviving child of her parents. On my side, it’s just my brother and me for our parents. So we ended up with much stuff. A lot of inherited stuff. Then there’s everything Carole and I bought. We buy shit.
It makes us consumerist dickheads—but honestly, it’s fun to shop for stuff. And buy stuff. Even though, considering the state of the world.
Jacobsen: This is a conversation we haven’t had. So, how is flying in your mid-sixties?
Jacobsen: Yeah. Flying. So, what was the original question I asked?
Rosner: So, when we fly, it’s usually a long trip. Carole and I are based in Los Angeles. Our kid is in London. That’s ten or eleven hours. And it’s been miserable—on certain airlines—where there’s no room, and the plane is packed.
If I’m going to be in one position for more than a couple of hours, it has to be lying on my back. That’s from a lifetime of—I guess—lifting weights obsessively. I’m not some massive muscle guy, but whatever I’ve done with lifting has left me with a back that gets hurt in any position other than flat. And even then, after five hours of sleep, I wake up hurting.
But you put me in a plane seat, and it fucking sucks. We had one flight on which I thought I’d gotten lucky. The doors were shut, everyone was boarded, and there was an empty seat next to me on a flight back—this was a connecting flight out of Paris. It was going to be eleven and a half hours.
Then, at the last minute, some crazy woman who’d gotten into a fight elsewhere in the plane—somehow friends with the flight crew—got moved to the seat next to me. She twitched, kicked, and was generally low-grade wild for eleven and a half hours.
That flight fucking sucked.
Since then, we’ve had better luck—but it’s not just luck. Carole figured out a couple of tricks. One, we fly Virgin now. Virgin gives you a little more room—just a few extra inches, but it makes a difference. She also started looking into first class. From London to L.A. First class is thirteen thousand dollars—a fucking person. So, no, we’re not doing that.
But she found a different deal: for an extra hundred bucks per ticket, you get a few more inches here and there. It’s called Delight Class or Economy Delight.
We’ve not flown on weekends, which has made all the difference. Because we’ve been flying these massive Virgin planes. They don’t have 75 rows, but the row numbers go up to around 75—they skip numbers here and there for bathrooms and other sections—but still, it’s a huge fucking plane.
There are nine or ten seats across. The plane can hold probably 450 passengers, but if you fly midweek, it’s not full.
nd this last time—both coming and going—from L.A. to London, we had three seats. There was a little space behind the seats, between our row and the divider between cabin sections, where I could stand up. I had about—maybe—12 inches to move, so I brought resistance bands with me. I work out with them on planes now. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything physical.
So I had my little gym on the fucking plane, which was… I don’t know—great. Then, returning, the flight was empty enough that Carole and I each had our row of three seats to lie down in.
Now, you can’t fully stretch out across three economy seats—because that’s only about 54 to 57 inches, less than five feet—so you still have to curl up a little. And you have to keep your seatbelt on and visible. The flight attendants will come by. You can lie down, but you need to be buckled in.
The buckles dig in a little, but you can change positions and doze off for half an hour or an hour at a time. Economy Delight was fucking delightful—except for the pizza.
Carole decided to try the vegan meal option. You can request kosher or vegan ahead of time. She decided to see if the vegan food was any good. Virgin’s pretty good about feeding you something every couple of hours.
One of the courses was pizza. But because she had ordered vegan, she got some kind of wrap instead. We traded—she wanted the pizza, and I took the wrap.
And I dodged a bullet because we’re guessing it was the pizza.
It was the only thing she ate that I didn’t.
Starting a couple of hours after we landed, she got super-duper pissing-out-of-your-butt diarrhea. It lasted four days until she controlled it with Kaopectate and Imodium.
So we’re blaming the plane pizza.
But besides that? Everything was a fucking delight.
So that’s how flying is in your sixties. Carole turned 60. I turned 65.
We pee a lot. On a plane, I’ll pee every two and a half hours. But I do that on the ground, too. You notice it more on a plane, because it’s more of a production.
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