Many years ago, Dayna and I would enjoy going out for supper and then going to a movie. After a few years we just went out for supper because we didn’t want to stay up late enough to see a movie. A few more years and it changed to dinner, usually after church because we didn’t want to stay out when it started getting dark.

This past week I read the following and I, like David Martin believe its time for another change. How about Breakfast and a Movie?

Breakfast and a movie. How in the world did it come to this?

It seems that every other issue of every women’s magazine on the planet has an article about saving your marriage. And the number one piece of advice in these articles is to make time for you as a couple. But if you have young children, you know as well as I do that “couple time” is pretty much an imaginary concept.

Life wasn’t always like this, of course. Back in our childless days, my wife and I would frequently go out. One of our favorite activities was dinner and a movie.

Then baby arrives and things change. No one’s got the energy to go out at night. If baby is sleeping, that’s a good time for both of you to also catch a few zzzzs.

But thanks to all those magazine articles, we worried about our relationship. If there was no “us time,” surely our marriage was at risk.

So, we occasionally summoned up the courage to have a night out. We’d call up a babysitter and take a stab at that old standby: dinner and a movie.

Big mistake. If we weren’t nodding off during dinner, we definitely had a hard time staying awake through the movie. And even if we did manage to remain conscious, the only topic of conversation during our precious couple time was our infant daughter Sarah who was at home doing exactly what we should have been doing: sleeping.

We soon realized that dinner and a movie was no longer for us. All it meant was the outlay of extra money for a babysitter, the loss of a good night’s sleep and a disrupted routine.

But we didn’t want to give up on this concept of couple time. After all, lots of magazine writers (probably single and childless) were urging us on and we didn’t want to disappoint them.

So, we came up with a new approach: something we called movie and a dinner. We hired a babysitter for the afternoon and early evening and headed out to a matinee performance followed by the early bird special at a local eatery. This option worked surprisingly well.

Not only did we get to spend time together when we were both conscious and reasonably coherent. We also never had a problem getting a babysitter. After all, we were usually home by 7 p.m., long before the sitter’s own social life commenced.

But once our daughter passed the toddler stage, the movie and a dinner option didn’t work so well. Sarah had weekend activities and obligations. Or she wanted to have a friend over. Or she just wanted to spend more time with mommy and daddy.

As a consequence, we forgot about movie and a dinner. We were too busy occupied with family time and kids’ activities. Once again, couple time became the lowest priority.

But we hadn’t forgotten our magazine writer friends (probably sadistic and divorced). So, we searched for a new option.

Now that Sarah was in school and life was more normal, we thought maybe the old dinner and a movie approach would work. It turns out it didn’t.

Although life had returned to something approaching normalcy, it turns out that we had gotten older in the process. The thought of staying up past ten o’clock no longer had any appeal.

But surely there had to be some way to find time to spend together. According to our writer friends (probably rich with two nannies), our marriage depended on it. There had to be something we could do on a regular basis. Something that would allow us that precious “us time” without costing a fortune or disrupting our sleep.

Finally, this year we hit on the ultimate couple time solution: breakfast and a movie. With Sarah in school, every so often we take a weekday to ourselves. And what do we do? You guessed it.

We go out for a nice leisurely breakfast where we can listen, communicate and, best of all from my perspective, eat. And then it’s off to the local cinema multiplex which just so happens to start showing movies at ten or eleven in the morning.

We pick out a first run feature we’d like to see, put up our feet and enjoy two hours of uninterrupted movie viewing. Sometimes we even get the entire theater to ourselves.

After the movie is over, we have a whole array of options. We can go out for lunch, go to a coffee shop or browse in a bookstore. We can do a bit of shopping, watch another movie or, my personal favorite, go home and have a nap.

I think this is an option with legs. So long as Sarah is in school, we can continue to do breakfast and a movie. The only potential problem I see is that everyone reading this piece is going to start doing the same thing and the breakfast restaurants will be crowded and the morning shows at the cinemas will be sold out. Oh well, if that happens, there’s always takeout breakfast and a rental movie.

Many things have changed from the good old days; including words.

Here’s a phrase I heard all the time in my youth but never anymore-‘store-bought.’ Of course, just about everything is store-bought these days. But once it was bragging material to have a storebought dress or a storebought bag of candy.

‘Coast to coast’ is a phrase that once held all sorts of excitement and now means almost nothing, now we take the term ‘worldwide’ for granted.

This floors me. On a small scale, ‘wall-to-wall’ was once a magical term in our homes. In the ‘50s, everyone covered his or her hardwood floors with, wow, wall-to-wall carpeting! Today, everyone replaces their wall-to-wall carpeting with hardwood floors. Go figure.

When was the last time you heard the quaint phrase ‘in a family way?’ It’s hard to imagine that the word ‘pregnant’ was once considered a little too graphic, a little too clinical for use in polite company; so, we had all that talk about stork visits and ‘being in a family way’ or simply ‘expecting.’

Apparently ‘brassiere’ is a word no longer in usage. I said it the other day and my daughter cracked up. I guess it’s just ‘bra’ now. ‘Unmentionables’ probably wouldn’t be understood at all.

I always loved going to the ‘picture show,’ but I considered ‘movie’ an affectation.

Most of these words go back to the ‘50s, but here’s a pure ‘60s word I came across the other day ‘rat fink.’ Ooh, what a nasty put-down!

Here’s a word I miss-‘percolator.’ That was just a fun word to say. And what was it replaced with . .

. ‘Coffee Maker.’ How dull . . . Mr. Coffee, I blame you for this.

I miss those made up marketing words that were meant to sound so modern and now sound so retro.

Words like ‘Dyna Flow’ and ‘Electrolux’ and ‘Frigidaire’.

Introducing the 1963 Admiral TV, now with ‘Spectra Vision!’

Food for thought. Was there a telethon that wiped out lumbago? Nobody complains of that anymore.

Maybe that’s what Castor oil cured, because I never hear mothers threatening kids with Castor Oil anymore.

Some words aren’t gone but are definitely on the endangered list.

The one that grieves me most is ‘supper.’ Now, everybody says ‘dinner.’ Save a great word. Invite someone to supper and during the meal start discussing fender skirts.

There is nothing better than being a grandparent and here are some of my favorite quotes on that subject.

GRANDPARENTS

My friends have a baby. All you hear is, “You’ve got to come over and see the baby!” Nobody wants you to come over and see their grandfather. “He’s so cute, 164 pounds and four ounces. He’s a thousand months. He went to the bathroom by himself today.”

Jerry Seinfeld

You feel completely comfortable entrusting your baby to your parents for long periods, which is why most grandparents flee to Florida at the earliest opportunity.

Dave Barry

The truly enchanting thing about small children is that they don’t insist on showing you photographs of their grandparents.

Niall Toibin

My grandfather is a little forgetful, and he likes to give me advice. One day he took me aside . . . and left me there.

Ron Richards

My grandmother is 85 years old and she’s starting to lose her memory. Everybody’s upset about it except me, because I got eight checks for my birthday from her. Hey, that’s forty bucks! Tom Arnold

My grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands. Two of them were just napping.

Rita Rudner