Danielle Lurie’s short documentary, 81-Year-Old Sweethearts has recently been making its way around the internet*.  So the story goes, Lurie had been on a plane to DC when she met Jack, an 81-year-old man on his way to reunite with his high-school sweetheart, Betty, who he hadn’t seen in 62 years.

As a young man, he had gone into the service, and [two months later], she got married to someone else. Both moved on, but he found her on the Internet, discovered that both of their spouses had passed away, and decided to drop everything and be with her once again. [Cinematical]

I find the internet’s general, OMG-aren’t-old-people-adorable! attitude to be kind of obnoxious and patronizing, but I have to admit, this one was fairly charming, mainly because Jack is.  At one point he says, “Oh no, she hasn’t aged well at all, but I don’t care.”  Nice to see the urge to bang anything that moves doesn’t disappear with age.  He seems a lot happier to see her than she is him (a little clingy, aren’t you there, guy?), to the point where it’s a little awkward, but seeing them flirt as they got pushed away on wheelchairs made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like his old balls were on my heart.  Their reunion isn’t quite cute as the Christian the lion reunion, but that’s to be expected when you don’t have fur.  If scientists could just teach retarded kids to grow fur, they’d probably be a lot more fun to take care of.

Wait, did he just reference his mother (53-second mark)?  He’s 81 and his mother is still alive?  Jesus, did she get raped by the Kaiser?

81-ear-old-Sweethearts

[via Current, a few years ago, recently rediscovered by Jezebel, Cinematical. *I wrote the post before discovering it was old.  Oh well.  It was new to me.]