Louis Roney: Chiming in

• A good friend comments to me that if any of your relatives treat you worse than your friends, drop the kin-folk off your list. The old “saw” is still true: You pick your friends, but you’re stuck with your relatives.

• The daily paper brings me a fact of which I have been totally ignorant: guess what? My birthday, Jan. 26 is also “Australia Day!”

Whadda ya know matey? Speaking of birthdays, I got a card that said: “ Do you know why they call them birthdays? ....because you can’t fit the more politically correct Happy Factual Chronological Age Realization Awareness Day on a cake!” There is very little to celebrate when you reach 95 except for the fact that you reached 95! Lots of my friends and classmate have long ago expired — and here I am still using up public oxygen.

• The way I see it, if you have a great wife, you are a zillionaire in resources that are beyond measure. If you know someone who has a stormy marriage, ask him if I am not right.... My marriage is a source of happiness that far exceeds material goods.

Thirty-six years ago when I met my wife, I knew instantly that I had found “the” woman with all of the requisites for a marriage that would have few, if any, problems for me. During all the 35 years of our marriage we have been without great problems and no strife to mar our household’s bliss. It is requisite that marriage partners like each other, as well as love each other. B.w. and I are truly “best friends.” There is nothing I would not do for her and I’m sure the reverse is true.

• The first vote I ever cast was to support ideas of George Washington. I thought he was great ... and I’m still am voting for him in spirit today.

• Most of the afternoon of Sunday a few weeks ago, I was lost in the wonderful WUCF TV rerun of The Three Tenors, which included two of the really stupendous tenors of our time: Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. My youth allowed me to hear the incomparable Jussi Bjorling in several Carnegie Hall concerts in a variety of songs with piano, as well as opera performances at the Met. In company with my mother I also heard Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland sing a duet concert on the Met stage.

• My Grandmother advised me, “Never do anything of importance to earn money. If you are excellent in your achievements, the money will come.”

In all the intervening years, I can truly say that excellence has always been my goal — and money, never.

• People say, “it was a pleasure to be of service.” I think that is a dog-gone lie. It is usually a pain in the nether region — but do it anyhow!

• Of late, two of my Harvard classmates (1942) have phoned me — I guess maybe to see if I am still alive. I perhaps disappointed them, while pleasing myself, by reporting that I am very much still alive and kicking.

• Death, the great leveler, the king in his palace, the horse in his stall, whether monarch or peasant, he visits them all. We hope he will linger, stay ‘round for a while and that his dread finger will pause and beguile. His list is a long one but he’ll find us at last when our number is reached and our die has been cast. But let death come later, we fervently pray, and come when it will, but never today. —(L.R.)

• The book of one’s life can be large, or can be small. The life we have lived is the source of it all. It is not what we’ve said, but what we’ve done that stamps us forever and makes someone. Saying is easy and doing is hard. What will your book say about your today?

• The final debate (sans Trump) before the Iowa voting kicks off was actually good for all who took part. For my taste, winners were Rubio, Christie, Cruz, Kasich and Fiorina. Even Jeb had a good evening... Any one of the participants is better than liar Hillary, or socialist Barney. Choose wisely ... your future depends on it!