I answered the phone the other day and snarled at the robo caller. At least I thought it was a robocall. It was not.

Oops. It was Ms. Pigette herself, calling from her post as she held up a mailbox on Route 27. Of course, she replied in kind using language and colorful words I hadn’t heard strung together since I mustered out of the USMC over 50 years ago. Some of the sentences didn’t even feature verbs, just, well, NSFW nouns.

She ranted on and on about the White House being redecorated by the new administration. “They pulled out the rose garden lawn, put down tiles and tables with silly umbrellas, kind of like Mar-a-Lago. And, they are planning to install a new ballroom for big state dinners,” she said.

I told her I didn’t care. “I have lived in six houses in my lifetime. They were all redecorated at the direction and supervision of the family decorating committee. I did not serve on that committee. I was in charge of important things, like world peace, making sure we landed on the moon, and bringing home a paycheck.”

“Well,” she said. “In some quarters, home decor is deemed important to the well-being of the occupants,” she added. “Not to me,” I said.

I told her that once upon a time, my bride and I had been invited to the White House for a tour. It was a sunny Saturday morning, and the president was off somewhere; the staff was playing golf or at the shore, so they let us in the West Wing. On this TV show of the same name, the West Wing seems large. Well, it is not. The aisles are crowded. Some rooms, like the Situation Room, seemed shoe-horned into the elderly structure. To go to the Oval Office, you snake down a slim corridor where a large guard bars you from going inside. I guess they don’t want the unwashed, like me, to sit on the furniture. Not far from the Oval, I saw a nice antique cabinet that would cause a stir on the Antiques Roadshow. But it has some char on it. The sign said it had been burned when the British army burned the White House during the War of 1812.

“Anyway,” I told Ms. P, “I don’t have an opinion on the Oval’s gold ormolu decor, but the idea of a big ballroom would probably be a good idea. After all, the White House does host state dinners, and a big venue and kitchen would probably be useful. But it is not my job to critique the decor at the White House.”

“So what good are you?” she said. “Not much,” I replied, explaining I liked to poke fun at some of the silly things that come out of the White House, like firing the head of the IRS and exiling him to Siberia, er, Iceland. I told her I didn’t understand why he was appointed in the first place. He was a six-term congressman from Missouri who worked as an auctioneer before becoming the IRS honcho. Just the kind of guy you want in charge of thousands of employees who preside over our taxes. Right?

“Well, what about the POTUS-Putin pow-wow set for next week in Alaska?" she asked. “I hope and pray the president can fulfill one of his campaign brags, that he would end the war in Ukraine in the first days of his second presidency. But promising to solve complex wars is one thing. Doing it is another.

"What about the Texas Democrats skipping the legislature to block the GOP ploy to gobble up six more Congressional seats? Isn’t that un-American? That is what MSNBC says."

“Nah, I answered. Both sides do it. They all want to put in the fix to win elections. Gerrymandering is as American as apple pie. Remember it was invented by, and named after, Elbridge Gerry, a Massachusetts guy who signed the Declaration of Independence and was James Madison’s VEEP.

“Oh. I didn’t know that,” she said.

Meanwhile, I asked her if she read the study from Northwestern University targeting folks like me, who are on the north side of 80. They said, according to the Washington Post, the secret to staying sharp and avoiding mental decline after 80 has nothing to do with magic pills, strange diets, and too much exercise. Their researchers found out that the key to keeping your marbles is keeping strong social relationships.

“I can see why you like the study, you old fraud,” she said. “You are just trying to justify playing bridge a couple of times a week, and shooting the bull with your pals, instead of doing important stuff, like housework, cooking dinner, or weeding the garden.”

“And your problem is?” I answered as she hung up.