Over-40 set doesn’t need reminders about aging
Due to unforeseen circumstances, Patty Kimerer was unable to complete this week’s column. Instead, we bring you this Classic Kimerer first published Sept. 21, 2014.
I’ve never been one to complain about getting older. Well, not seriously, anyway.
I mean, the aging process is, as they say, a privilege not granted to all. It is a gift, a blessing, an honor. It sure as heck beats the alternative.
So, honestly, I’m really fairly OK with getting old. Mostly. In the larger sense. On the whole. Pretty much. Sorta.
For instance, the gray hair doesn’t bother me at all. And that is because I beat it into submission by dyeing it my previously natural color of chestnut brown. So there.
But then again, there are those confounded age spots. I could do without those.
What is the deal with those little buggers, anyway? You’re strolling along, getting used to the fact that you can only run a third as fast as you could in your prime when you glance down at your legs and BAM! there they are — Mother Nature’s nasty little trick on the body’s largest organ. Some people even refer to them as “liver spots” — can you imagine?
Blech.
What causes these unsightly battle scars in the age war, anyway? According to the Mayo Clinic, “Age spots are caused primarily by years of exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun.”
Wow, that sun is as just fickle a mamma jamma as Mother Nature, isn’t she? Talk about age discrimination! I mean, when you’re young and you get a tan, it is said that you’ve been “kissed by the sun.” Apparently, after age 45, those sun smacks morph into permanent brown hickeys.
Hmpf.
Then there’s the inevitable age-related change in vision.
Even if you’ve yet to experience the splendor of the seemingly overnight need for bifocal lenses, the over-40 set typically and at a bare minimum, requires “cheaters” to read any printed thing within arm’s length or further or closer. Suffice it to say, what once we could clearly glean whether it was two inches from or noses or situated four miles down the block now requires the assistance of the Hubble Telescope to be viewed.
More hmpf. Which brings me to the granddaddy of ’em all, the wrinkles / saggy skin.
Ugh.
Look, just as the vinyl siding of New England home that’s sustained 4 1/2-plus decades of brutal nor’easters, savage winters and occasional hurricanes of the past four-plus decades openly bears its wounds, the outer human layer also cannot withstand constant wear-and-tear unscathed. And that danged gravity isn’t helping matters, either.
Sigh.
But, people, and let me be perfectly clear on this point: not a single one of us over the age of 45 needs to be reminded that we have gray hair, age spots, misshapen corneas and / or waffled-up wrinkles, OK? This past week alone, three people for whom I care very deeply were verbally accosted about their tell-tale signs of aging. One of them wrote this column.
“Oh, are you here about our options?” asked the whipper-snapper receptionist of a local plastic surgeon when I wandered into the office to hand out a flyer last Tuesday afternoon.
“What? No, I just came to invite you to an event “ I said, my voice trailing off as I watched her study every line on my face as if she were following the interstate on a map of the U.S. to find the quickest route back to her hometown of Youthville.
“Hmm. Maybe you should consider it. Would you like a brochure?” she said.
I think. It was hard to hear her from my car with the radio blaring and the tires screeching.
Sheesh!
And, as for the woman who told my girlfriend she needs Botox. You better watch it, Missy, or you’re going to be needing to see that plastics guy after I pop you in your soon-to-be fat lip.
Rude.
Then there was the photographer who suggested to my other pal (roughly 35 years my senior) that she’d be best served to purchase the “enhancement” option of her just-taken family photo to airbrush out any imperfections. Suggesting virtual Botox is, again, unnecessarily hurtful.
Grrr.
Aging I can handle. It’s the discount coupons for tummy tucks, eye-lifts and injected, sculpted, laser-pointed or other typed body modifications that are making me feel old. Oh well, hang in there, fellow cronies. I’m here for you — no, no, I’m over here — if you squint, you can see me better!
Kimerer is a Tribune Chronicle columnist who is apparently older than dirt. Contact her in large type font at pkimerer@ zoominter net.net.