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Can we please just go home now? I am tired

Many of you, well-married types, entering the September of your lives, have probably had this experience.

There was a time not so long ago when you went out at about the same time that you now want to go to bed. That is what the years do to you. For some reason wives have more energy and the gap between couples over the approach to 'do we really have to go' scenarios increases dramatically.
Many of you, well-married types, entering the September of your lives, have probably had this experience. It has been a crappy day at work, the boss was unreasonable and demanding, the grand scheme you had planned to present broke a wing before take-off lies there wriggling on the office floor with none to do it reverence and now all you are looking forward to is a quiet evening eating popcorn, watching TV, or reading trash novels or simply doing nothing.
You dump your briefcase and enter your room and there lying on the bed are a set of recently pressed clothes. You let out this sad and long sigh because you know you are trapped. Your wife sings out, you better hurry, we are running late.
With misery plotting havoc in your mind you plaintively ask, where are we going? The answer floats back on a glider of asperity: It is Tuesday, it is the Sishta dinner, how could you forget, I asked you before agreeing.
Yes, but that was then, this is now. Look, I love the Sishtas, nothing against them, nothing against anyone, I just don't want to entertain or be entertained.
I recently received this forward which so captures the mood I was in. It says:  I hate to cancel at this last minute and you might think badly of me. I know we made plans to get together tonight but that was three hours ago. I was so much younger then, full of hope, vim and vigour. But now I am tired. I want to stay home and get into bed after an early dinner.
Have you never felt like that? As one grows older the need to be gregarious and spend time chatting,  partying, and meeting becomes such a chore. I received this line in great thought the other day and I said to myself, this person is me, so me it is not funny. And I felt such relief there are others out there who think the same way.
I saw people through the glass window. That is enough social interaction for the day. Enough for now, now push off, will you.
Younger people do not understand this. For them the night is forever young. Your adult kids are seen coming into the room at 11pm preparatory to going out on a weekend night.
Where are you going?
Now?????
Do you know what time it is?
Yes, it is five past eleven.
And you are going out now?
Yes, why, is there a problem with that?
See what I mean, it is another energy field. Just thinking about it puts me to sleep.
And talking of sleep we did end up at the Sishtas because for husbands it is easier to surrender than walk on slabs of cold silence because you ruined your wife's fun evening.
We are sitting there 'enjoying' ourselves and Cinderella's about to leave the ball before her coach turns into a pumpkin and I wouldn't mind going with her but here people have just been cajoled into having coffee and green tea and I am wondering why can't you guys go home and splash in a tub of green tea (or any coloured) so we can leave, I mean why do hosts always fill the post dinner silence with this option.
At which point my phone buzzes and in that husband-wife in a crowd 'I am giving you a whatsapp message but don't put it down until I have, so people won't know it is from me to you' fashion, it reads: "For heaven's sake, you are such an embarrassment, you have dozed off, everyone is noticing it."
Do I care?
-bikram@khaleejtimes.com