Though I generally loathe “Ladies! It’s still possible to get married after [X advanced age]!” stories — maybe we don’t want to get married at any age? Maybe, like George Clooney, we want to stay single for life? And that’s so sad and weird because? — I did, in fact, read this entire USA Today article and will now force it upon you, too.

What I was intrigued to find out was not that it is (“Ladies!”) still possible to get married for the first time after age 45 and that growing numbers of people are doing just that, but rather this: that the CDC tracks this information.

 As in: “A tally by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is available just for a 20-year period, 1970 to 1990, shows that in 1990, only 0.4% of women and 0.6% of men married for the first time at ages 45 to 49.” Huh. I thought the CDC tracked (not to mention controlled and prevented), you know, diseases — where one might still find the plague, for example. I’m not sure what this means for marriage. Pox, anyone?