3There once lived a little old man and a little old woman (both of whom had no actual names, but who seemed to get along quite well with just "Little Old Man" and "Little Old Woman") in a somnolent little town that was so remotely located that no cartographer had ever ventured to give it a place on the map. The little old man was in his late eighties and the little old woman was in her early eighties, and together they lived in their little old house in the middle of town. (The town, unfortunately, was not in possession of a name either.)
The Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman lived and worked like any other little old man and little old woman in the world. They were simple people, and they chose not to pursue the more extravagant pleasures of life, wisely preferring to be frugal rather than profligate. They were not poor, for they had more money than half the town put together – just frugal.
The Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman together had over a hundred and sixty years between them; and for many years, this earned them a lot of respect – and money, which was the reason they were as rich as they were. People paid a lot of money just to bask in the splendor of their presence, and such payments had in course of time added up to the substantial fortune that the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman had to their name. With every passing birthday their years augmented, and the respect the townsfolk had for them grew.
And they lived peacefully for many years, growing old at a healthy rate and earning good money for it.
Just when their career as the oldest family in town was about to reach a new height, however, there sprang out of nowhere a family, hitherto unheard of, that boasted of even more years than the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman.
They were the Fredricksons, a family of thirty. The husband and the wife had only about sixty years between them. It was their twenty-eight five-year-olds who gave their family a forty-year edge over the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman.
As part of the town's age-old tradition, every year, the family with the greatest number of years was awarded the Prize of Honor, which, as the name would suggest, was a prize of honor – one that was worth fighting over and worth dissembling one's true age for, and all that.
Up until six years ago, the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman unfailingly received the Prize of Honor every year. They were looked upon as legendary, and there was not a child who did not say to his or her parents, "I want to be like the Little Old Man when I grow up", or "I want to be like the Little Old Woman when I grow up", as the case may be. Their mere presence elicited gasps of amazement wherever they went, and the Mayor had decided that the "Annual Prize of Honor Day" be renamed to "the Annual Little Old Man and Little Old Woman Day".
But good times never last, as a wise man – or a wise woman, as the case may be – once said, and the Fredricksons, then only a mere couple, decided to put an end to the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman's win-streak once and for all. And before anyone in the town knew what was happening, the unobtrusive family of two grew into a family of five, and then into a family of ten – then twenty – then thirty.
The Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman became alive to the presence of their future contenders for the Prize of Honor when the Fredricksons planted themselves next to their house. The Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman stared incredulously whenever Mrs. Fredrickson came out of the garage with a stroller built for twenty-eight.
"This can only mean one thing," she had said to the Little Old Man over dinner one day. "The Fredricksons want the Prize of Honor."
The Little Old Man had started and spilled his soup on the kitchen floor.
"Now look what you've done!" the Little Old Woman had said, ripping the Little Old Man's wig off his head and proceeding to wipe the floor with it.
"You were saying?" the Little Old Man had said, replacing the wig on his head.
"Yes," the Little Old Woman had said. "According to my calculations, the Fredricksons have among them a total of seventy-eight years."
"And how many do we have?"
"One hundred and sixty, almost."
"Then they're no threat to us," the Little Old Man had said confidently.
"Fool," the Little Old Woman had said. "Next year we shall have a hundred and fifty-two years between us, and the Fredricksons…"
"And they?"
"They will have a hundred and eight."
The Little Old Man had started violently once again at this point and spilled the rest of his soup all over the Little Old Woman's front. This had resulted in a violent outburst on the Little Old Woman's part, which had left the Little Old Man incapacitated, and very nearly cost the couple over eighty of their prized years, the details of which are irrelevant.
Although the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman never brought up the topic of that particular dinner again, there lingered somewhere at the back of their minds dark misgivings. For every two years by which the Little-Old-Man-and-Little-Old-Woman pair aged, the Fredricksons aged by 30. They would have to come up with something quickly in order to salvage their position as the oldest couple in town. Money doesn't grow on trees, the Little Old Woman constantly reminded her husband. Their fortune would eventually disappear, and then they would be left completely at the mercy of Fate.
"But what do we do?" was the question that the Little Old Man asked whenever the Little Old Woman said, "We must act!"
To this the Little Old Woman had no response.
Once the Little Old Man casually suggested murder, and the Little Old Woman began walloping him with a broomstick.
"We are not murderers," said the Little Old Woman.
"Not yet," said the Little Old Man in sepulchral tones. "But there's a first time for everything."
And then he was walloped with the broomstick a second time.
One evening, when the Little Old Woman was sitting in her balcony, sipping tea and staring wistfully in the direction of the Fredricksons' residence and thinking about what she would not do to have a family as large as theirs, when she was struck by a sudden realization. She stood up with a start and spilled tea all over the front of her dress. But she was so overcome with excitement that she did not even notice.
"Little Old Man!" she said, hurrying down the stairs, taking three steps at a time. Her doctor would have had a heart attack if he had seen her then.
"What is it, Little Old Woman?" said the Little Old Man with a yawn, having been violently jerked out of his mid-evening nap.
"Oh, Little Old Man!" said the Little Old Woman, hardly able to contain her excitement. "I have found the solution!"
"To what?"
"To how we can beat the Fredricksons!"
"Really?" The Little Old Man stood up so violently that his knees gave way, and he collapsed back into the armchair. "What is it?"
"We must adopt people into our family."
"People?"
"Yes," said the Little Old Woman. "Old people – from the Retirement Home. I heard the place was getting crowded anyway."
"Well, well, well!" said the Little Old Man. "That's a splendid idea!"
And that very evening they went with their lawyer down to the Retirement Home and adopted every one of the forty people living in it (their ages ranging from 70 to 90).
The next year the Mayor declared that the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman were back in the game.
"And with a total of almost three thousand six hundred years in their family, the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman are without a doubt the winners of the Prize of Honor."
The Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman's happiness knew no bounds. They made it a point to rub it into the Fredricksons' faces.
"Thought you could outdo us, did you?" said the Little Old Woman to Mrs. Fredrickson.
Mrs. Fredrickson said nothing, but ushered her children – the twenty-eight of them, now six years old – into the house with a conspiratorial air. The next morning, they moved to the other side of town. The morning after that, Mr. and Mrs. Fredrickson showed up at the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman's house with a lawyer.
"What seems to be the problem?" asked the Little Old Man.
"Actually," said Mr. Fredrickson austerely. "All the people you adopted last year happen to be my god parents."
The Little Old Man's jaw dropped.
"Since when?"
"Today. They rightfully belong to our family. We have come to take them home. We have built a bigger house on the other side of town to accommodate them."
"How unscrupulous!" said the Little Old Woman. "We adopted them first!"
"I'm sorry, madam," said the lawyer, straightening his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "But it turns out that your adoption forms were invalid."
The following year the Prize of Honor went to the Fredricksons.
As for the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman, they moved to a neighboring town, where they took up growing potatoes. In that town, the family that grew the most potatoes won the Annual Potato Prize. The prospects seemed promising.