“My life has no meaning, no purpose,” I said.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you, clean out your car,” my wife said. “What’s the purpose of all those receipts, napkins and batteries all over the floor?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never done anything that makes people whisper, ‘It’s him! I can’t believe what he accomplished.'”

“Trust me,” Terry said. “If you clean out your car, I’ll call everybody. No one will believe you finally did it.”

Ignoring my wife’s ill-timed attempts at humor, I flapped a newspaper in her face. “See this couple? That’s David and Jennifer Rush of Idaho. They broke a Guinness World Record by dressing him in 32 T-shirts in one minute.”

“I can’t believe it.” Terry snatched the newspaper. “You keep wearing the same old ratty T-shirt. She got her husband to put on 32 clean ones all at once? Incredible.”

“You’re missing the point.” I grabbed the newspaper back. “David Rush is a world record holder. I’ve done nothing.”

“If you can clean out that car in less than two hours, that will be a record no one can beat.” She pushed me toward the door. “I’ll time you.”

I dug in my heels. “I’m serious. Look, it says that David Rush holds more than 100 Guinness World Records.”

“Never heard of him until now. Didn’t do much for the fame thing, did it?”

“We can both share the glory. Like this one — he wrapped his wife in cling wrap in a minute and 57 seconds. That beat the world record by 2 seconds.”

“That’s disturbing,” Terry said.

“He didn’t smother her. It’s only from the neck down.”

“No. It’s disturbing that he BEAT a world record. That means no matter how silly I think it is, someone else did it first.”

“Just for that, I’m not going to let you help me break Rush’s record for the most ping-pong balls caught in shaving cream piled on a person’s head in 30 seconds.”

“You’re making that up.”

I tapped the news article. “No, it’s right here. He said he’s been bored without sports during the coronavirus pandemic, so he’s working on a whole new batch of records. He glopped a Marge Simpson shaving cream hairdo on his buddy…”

“Not on his wife?” Terry asked.

“For some weird reason, neither of their wives volunteered. Anyway, he threw ping-pong balls from 2 meters away and got 29 of them to stick in 30 seconds. He splattered the old records of 21 and 22 ping-pong balls.”

Terry rolled her eyes. “I wonder if his car is clean.”

“A couple weeks ago he broke the record for drinking a full liter of pure lemon juice — 16.53 seconds.”

“That was a thing?”

“Of course it is. The old record was 17.12 seconds.”

Terry handed me three trash bags and a pail of soapy water. “Pucker up to this sour challenge: The current record for cleaning the inside of a car with that amount of gunk is an hour and 47 minutes.”

I looked up from the newspaper. “There’s a record for that?”

“If there’s one for drinking lemon juice, there has to be one for car cleaning.”

I thought about it. Fame. Glory. Soapy water. “You know, I just realized, my life does have meaning and purpose. Probably too much. I’m going to take a nap instead.”

“Another one?” she said. “That has to be a record.”

• Set records with Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com, the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook or @BurtonWCole on Twitter.