Mom, on the other hand, was trying her best to hang on to the child in me. I was the youngest of her five children, her last baby, and the fact that I was growing up meant she was getting older, too. It was a truth she may not have wanted to face—not yet anyway.
None of us can control our own aging process, so we sometimes do what we can to delay the aging process of others. We think if we can just slow the clock for them, our own clock might slow down, too. We do this with TV and movie stars. We don’t want to admit they’re aging at all. It threatens our own youth. So through the miracle of film and videotape, we trap them in their younger days, before gray hair and gravity set in. And we make them stay there. We place an unfair burden on them to always look young, act young, and sound young, while our own aging process continues unabated.
The simple truth is we’re all growing older, even those we so desperately wish wouldn’t. So, yes, I forced a smile, said thank you once again, and went to my room. If she didn’t want me to grow up, who was I to take that away from her?
Later that evening, after I had sufficiently displayed my dissatisfaction with the doll, at least in the privacy of my room—I took it out of its package and started playing with it. I even had fun.
I guess I didn’t really want to grow up so fast, either.
YOU KNOW YOU’RE
GETTING OLD WHEN . . .
you find yourself wishing recliners had ejection seats.
21
A Hairy Experience
I don’t know why, but for some reason, as we grow older we start growing hair in places where hair never grew before. I’m not sure what the medical term for this is, but I’d hazard a guess that the words ‘‘Big Foot’’ are in there somewhere.
I have a hair on my cheek that can grow two inches long if I let it. It’s blond, so I can’t always see it when I look in the mirror. Most of the time my husband will notice it first.
‘‘If you’re going to keep that,’’ he’ll say, pointing at the stray hair, ‘‘don’t you think you oughta perm it?’’
He’s such a romantic.
There’s a hair on my chin that can take a growing spurt, too. I usually don’t notice that one until it’s curling itself into my bowl of cereal.
I’m not sure why aging makes previously well mannered hair start doing these kinds of strange things, but it does. Maybe it’s a hormone thing. Hormones like to act up at this particular time in our lives, so if our ankles start growing sideburns, we shouldn’t panic. It might just be a side effect of perfectly normal hormonal changes.
I am actually having the opposite problem now. For some reason, when I hit thirty-five the hairs on my legs stopped growing altogether. I don’t mind, of course. Shaving was always a high-risk ordeal for me. I’d end up with more cuts and slashes than a Republican budget. So who knows, not having to shave my legs may have increased my life expectancy by ten years.
The hair on my head is getting thinner, too. I first noticed something was happening when I was able to fit all of it onto one large curler. And brushing my hair out each morning was taking less and less time. Even my bangs are thinning out. They look like a little blond picket fence that’s missing more posts than it started with.
Not only does the volume of our hair change as we get older but also the color. My husband’s hair is almost all gray. I’ve been trying to get him to use a permanent hair color for men, but so far he’s holding out. He thinks leaving work on Friday with gray hair and returning on Monday with black hair might not be as undetectable as the TV ads imply. He feels he can’t explain the younger look as having simply caught up on his sleep.
Another thing that hair starts to do, especially on men, is back up, turn inward, and start to grow out of their ears. Most men don’t mind. To them, hair is hair no matter where it grows. Some men even go so far as to grow out their ear hairs and comb them up over their bald spot. I think that’s carrying things a bit too far. If it gets that bad, maybe they should just go ahead and shave their whole head. It didn’t hurt the careers of Yul Brynner, Telly Savalas, or Michael Jordan.
My father was able to keep a full head of hair into his seventies. The hair on his head stayed put, but he developed a receding eyebrow, forcing him to color it in with an eyebrow pencil. He wasn’t happy about it, but he did what he had to do. Well, guess who inherited his unnatural hair loss? I started losing my left eyebrow about a decade ago. Of all the things I could lose, I suppose an eyebrow isn’t so bad. At least I can color it in. It’s harder to color in a gall bladder.
No matter what color our hair is, whatever unnatural place it’s started to grow, or how much of it we have left, the most important thing to remember is this: it doesn’t work that well as dental floss, so try to keep it out of your cereal.
He is so old that his blood type was discontinued.
—Bill Dana
22
A Cut Above
After grocery shopping today, I walked to my car and found an ad for the services of a plastic surgeon tucked under the left windshield wiper. I didn’t take it personally. I really doubt that a plastic surgeon was lurking in the bushes waiting for a good candidate to happen along. Yet there it was in black and white—telling me how I could take five, ten, twenty years off my appearance with the mere snip of some surgical scissors.
Now, as tempting as a more youthful look sounded, the word ‘‘snip’’ gave me pause. I don’t like that word used in conjunction with one of my body parts. Snip and clip is what we do to hedges, tree limbs, and chicken parts. We even snip and clip our hair, but it doesn’t involve anesthesia, bruising, or a four-week recovery period (unless, of course, it’s a really bad haircut).
But a lot of people are opting for plastic surgery these days. I guess they’re not buying into the notion that wrinkles add character. They’re going the snipping, clipping, reshaping, moving-this-here-and-that-there route. They rearrange their faces like some people rearrange their furniture. One thing that gets interesting is their photo Christmas cards. It’s almost like going through a family album in reverse.
Plastic surgeons now offer all sorts of new procedures, so no matter what you’re unhappy with, they can fix it. They can even lift the whole face, make the necessary adjustments, and reattach it again. A friend of mine had something like this done and the end result was terrific. Even so, it sounds a bit drastic for me. I’d probably get a surgeon with a sense of humor who’d put my face back on upside down to see how long it took for people to notice.
Laser surgery and chemical treatments are getting popular, too. Some of the results can be quite remarkable, but again, I’d be afraid something would go wrong. What if I ended up with a cute little chin cleft right where my nose used to be?
So, after reading the advertisement on my windshield, I tossed it on the passenger’s seat and drove home. I knew I’d never call for an appointment, but I thought about calling to offer a good business tip: Leaving flyers on cars parked in grocery store parking lots isn’t going to gain a lot of new clients. If this guy really wants his phone ringing off the hook, he needs to place his ad where it will get some attention: the mirrors in ladies’ dressing rooms. Everyone knows that when a woman looks at herself in dressing room lighting, she always looks at least twenty years older. We forget all about the outfit we’re trying on and gaze in disbelief at the decrepit stranger staring back at us in the mirror. If a plastic surgeon’s business card were taped there, we might rush to the nearest pay phone. Better yet, he could move his office to the mall and save us all a lot of time and effort.
Grow old with me. The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.
—Robert Browning
23
Old Friends
New jobs, new homes, new churches—all bring the possibilities of making new friends. And making new friends is one of the things that keeps life exciting. But there’s something to be said for old friends—friends who have been there through the good and the bad: a wedding, a
divorce, the births of our babies, child-rearing, illness, hospital stays, job loss, moving, birthdays, funerals. Friends who’ve remained close no matter how many miles have come between us. Friends who have stuck by us even when it was difficult to do so.
Some of the following may apply to new friends, too, but they definitely describe old friends.
Old friends know just when to call.
Old friends don’t need an excuse to drop by.
Old friends can be trusted with secrets.
Old friends know what you’re thinking even before you speak.
Old friends aren’t jealous of your successes or pleased with your failures.
Even when years have passed, old friends can pick up right where they left off.
A stroll in the park, lunch, or a day of shopping—it doesn’t take much to have fun with an old friend.
Old friends don’t have to ask, ‘‘What can I do to help?’’ They just know.
Old friends don’t only know the real you, they prefer it.
When disagreements arise, old friends don’t have to be right.
Old friends overlook your faults instead of keeping a list of them.
Old friends treat you the same behind your back as they do when they are with you.
Old friends give you the benefit of the doubt.
Old friends have stood the test of time, time and time and time again.
Old friends are like antiques—the longer you have them, the more valuable they become.
Old friends are what friendship is all about.
YOU KNOW YOU’RE
GETTING OLD WHEN . . .
your grandchild asks you to close your eyes so she can give you a surprise, and you don’t wake up until the following afternoon.
24
Blisters, Sweat, and Tears
Exercise is important at any age, but it’s especially important for those of us who are over forty. Lucky for me, there’s a fully equipped state-of-the-art YMCA gym about a mile or so from my home. It has everything—rowing machines, exercise bicycles, an Olympic-size swimming pool, aerobics classes. I know this because I drive by it every night on my way to Baskin Robbins. I looked into joining it, but they suggested I wait until they opened their new Intensive Care Unit (I think that’s their code name for advanced classes).
Physical exertion has never been high on my priority list, so it’s a good thing I became a writer. Producers and editors don’t often ask you to ‘‘drop and give me two hundred push-ups.’’ (Well, maybe during contract negotiations, but that’s all.)
Realizing the importance of exercise, I have managed to work some of it into my daily routine. Whenever possible, I take the stairs instead of the elevator, especially if I’m going down. And now I run to the ice cream truck instead of walking to it. It’s a good workout and easier to catch up to it that way.
I enjoy bowling, which is good exercise, especially since I prefer to walk down to the pins before releasing the ball. Not only do I burn more calories this way but I also better my score.
Tennis doesn’t work as well for me. I find it too difficult to keep track of the ball, and it’s much too tempting to use the net as a hammock.
I’ve tried working out on various forms of exercise equipment, but they’re not my cup of sweat, either. The idea of lifting weights doesn’t appeal to me in the least. I figure carrying junk mail into the house every day and tossing it into the wastebasket gives my muscles all the workout they need.
My experience with a treadmill was less than beneficial. I had one for a while, and my cardiovascular system might have gotten a good workout on it, but my pillow kept getting stuck on the conveyor belt.
Since I don’t like traditional forms of exercise, someone once asked me if I’d ever thought about giving clogging a try. Other than my arteries, I had to say no. Clogging does appear to be a great workout, though, so I’ve ordered a couple of videotapes to learn how to do it. I figure if it doesn’t get me into shape, at least it’d be a fun way to strip the varnish from my hardwood floors.
Walking is still one of the safest and most effective forms of exercise for those of us over forty, so I try to do a little each day. My favorite place to walk is the airport. If you’ve never tried it, you should check it out sometime. It’s air-conditioned, you get to meet a lot of different people from all over the world, and if you walk on the moving sidewalks, you can do two miles in nothing flat.
Even though I don’t exhibit much energy on the outside, in my mind I’m a workout fool. There’s absolutely no exercise I can’t picture myself doing. Mention aerobics, and in my mind I’m Jane Fonda. Gymnastics? I’m Mary Lou Retton. Swimming? I’m one of the lifeguards on Baywatch. But that’s just in my head. In reality, I’m more like Aunt Bea, Grandma Moses, and one of the near-drowning victims on Baywatch.
One of the reasons I don’t exercise is because of a bad experience I once had. Someone told me a vibrator belt was good for shaking your body into shape. You just wrap it around yourself, turn it on, and let it shake you like a bowl of Jell-O. It sounded simple enough. Besides, they also said it would help get rid of my cellulite, so I decided to give it a try. I used it on my hips and my legs, and when they suggested I try it on my arms, I gave those a good shaking, too. It worked, but not in the way I had imagined.
When I woke up the next morning, I looked in the mirror and noticed something odd, something very different from the firm image I expected. For some reason, all my upper arm fat had slid down to my elbows. There were huge indentations in my upper arms—sinkholes, if you will—that dipped almost to the bone. I had fat-free upper arms and elbows the size of swim floats. In short, I looked like Popeye. The cellulite didn’t go away, it just went south for the winter.
I made an appointment with Dr. Robert Rood, my longtime physician, who after a thorough examination explained that it was some sort of medical oddity. People have used vibrator belts for years, and he had never seen anything like this.
After two years of stares, questions from curious people, and, of course, the Popeye references, I awoke one morning to discover that my upper arm fat had mysteriously returned to where it came from. It had been two long years, but now the fat was back in its rightful place, along with the cellulite, but this time I decided to leave well enough alone.
The rest of my body could still use some work, though. And since I’m in my forties, I figure it’s time to make those changes. It’s time to develop an exercise program and stick with it. It’s time to . . . I’ll get back to this later. I think I just heard the ice cream truck.
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
—Les Brown
25
You’re So Vein
My varicose veins are starting to spell out my name. Not my whole name, of course, just my initials. The M is pretty easy to make out, and right now the B looks more like a P, but it’s well on its way. I’m just waiting for the people from Ripley’s Believe It or Not! to contact me, and I’ll be rolling in the dough. Unless, of course, someone else has already beat me to it.
A lot of people over forty have varicose veins. Some even have what they call ‘‘spider veins’’—the network of veins that look a lot like a spider web. I don’t have spider veins yet. I guess God figures I have enough webs around my house to deal with—why make me wear them, too?
My mother had varicose veins. I’m sure there was a medical reason for them, but I personally attributed her condition to the fact that she worked at a department store and was on her feet most of the day. It doesn’t seem fair, does it? Hard work should result in a strong heart, good muscle tone, and healthy lungs, not the alphabet suddenly appearing on your calves.
Today there are various treatments for varicose veins, some simple, others more extensive. So far, I think I’ll keep mine. They don’t actually hurt, and, lucky for me, the blue stripes only clash with a few of my outfits.
I’ve got so many liver spots I should come with a side of onions
.
—Phyllis Diller
26
Where’s Your Drive?
I don’t believe age should be a determining factor in issuing a driver’s license. One’s driving skill, reflexes, and knowledge of the highway laws are what should be held up to scrutiny. Age is nothing more than a number.
At the age of seventy, my mother scored 100 percent on her driving test. She was an excellent driver who preferred to drive in the slow lane whenever possible. When making left turns, her motto was ‘‘If you wait long enough, it’ll eventually be clear.’’ Having to drive the streets of Los Angeles, this motto often kept us waiting at intersections into the night, but Mother was emphatic. Whenever risk could be avoided, she avoided it.
The rules of the road have changed so much lately, I wonder if she’d even pass the test today, much less get another perfect score. Remember the good ol’ days when the potential answers to a question like ‘‘What do you do when someone is tailgating you?’’ used to be: (a) slow down, (b) swerve to avoid his hitting you, or (c) gently honk your horn? There wasn’t any (d) draw a gun on him, or (e) pull over and beat him to a pulp.
The test is more difficult because of so many societal changes, but as I said, age shouldn’t be a determining factor in driver’s license renewal. If, however, any of the following apply to you, you might want to consider voluntarily surrendering yours.
IT MIGHT BE TIME TO GIVE UP YOUR DRIVER’S LICENSE IF . . .
• you’ve ever waited in an intersection through three or more light changes before making your left turn;
Didn't My Skin Used to Fit? Page 5