Gerd, 66, and Dina, 79 Gerd, 66, and Dina, 79

One day, he comes in my house and says, "What happened with your husband? He has an affair with my wife!"
  • Aubrey Reuben, 76

    "I've dated 300 women since my wife died. Some of them I date for one night and I don't want to see them again. Others I want to see. They have to have a brain."
  • Dory, 66

    "If someone had told me that we would ever get back together, I would have laughed. Because it wasn't just a separation. We really did sever the ties."
  • Craig Johnson, 42

    "I went to go get a vasectomy on a Thursday. And then Sam called crying on the phone on Saturday and said she was pregnant. And our whole world just changed in that moment."
  • Rebecca, 47

    Most of our conversations were conducted between the Mexican busboy. Hector couldn't speak English, so he would talk to the busboy in Portuguese, and the busboy would speak to me in English. And then we arranged to go on a date.
  • Shawn, 31

    "I met my ex-wife, Jackie, when she was 12 years old and I was 17. We kind of had this little thing."
  • Louise, 52

    "Do you know the dollar dance? You pay a dollar to dance with the groom ... And you just dance for a minute. Heartbreaking. And after that we didn't have contact for 15 years."
  • Paul Pesce, 83

    I turned to her and said, "Could I take you to your home?" She looks at me and -- with a pause -- she says, "If you got a quarter you can go anywhere you want."

Bio

John Bowe is a freelance writer living in New York. He is the co-writer of the film "Basquiat," co-editor of "GIG: Americans Talk About Their Jobs," and author of "Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor And the Dark Side of The New Global Economy." He has written for the New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, McSweeney's, and appeared on NPR's "This American Life."

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