How Did I Get Here?

People are always telling me I look young for my age…and I want to believe them! 

Because who wouldn’t? 

On the other hand, when I stop to think about it, these are people who (a.) have not seen me naked, (b.) have not seen me try to walk... when I first arise in the morning, and (c.) forget that underneath my beautiful light chestnut hair is a head of gray-almost-white hair.  (Actually, I myself have never seen this grandma head of gray hair because the minute it rears its ugly roots, I rush off to have it smothered with this syrupy brown dye stuff, applied thoroughly with a paint brush, and then sit there and breathe the fumes, all so I can have people tell me I look younger than my age and believe them.) 

It is the only thing I am vain about - my hair not being gray.  I choose this to be vain about, because I can control it.  No sense being vain about my naked body, there’s no fighting gravity, and no sense being vain about my graceless movement patterns in the morning, there’s no fighting the barometer.  Now that I think of it, there was never any reason to be vain about my naked body, but that’s another whole story.

When people say I look young, I always say it’s because of my boring life style…no sunbathing, no cigarettes, no late night parties, and so forth.  In fact, when I think about it, I end up wishing I had a few more wrinkles like the ladies who have summer cottages and are bronze-tan no matter what the doctors warn against, or those who have led a wild life of cavorting from party to party. 

In addition, it goes without saying, the expression “You’re only as old as you feel”, is also pretty much lost on me.  Some nights I feel eighty.  Some mornings I feel eighty.  In fact, I am going to go check my driver’s license right now…

Nope, still sixty-two.

I know it sounds silly, but I love that the year of my birth is 1950.  It makes it so easy to remember my age.  Since it’s hard to forget what decade of my life I am in, that’s all I have to do is use the last number of the year, add it to the decade, and I know my age.  I figure this will come in handy in a few years when I forget even more than I do now.

Now, there is a redeeming side to this story, and this is it:  like most of the “baby boomers” around, in my brain, I am very young.  In my brain, I think I should work, socialize, be a caretaker, go on dates, buy cool clothes, and have a lot of fun, just like I used to many years ago.  And, I actually do think and then aspire to live like that, the only thing is that at night, I am really tired.  And I can only do it for a few days in a row, then I get crabby and have to rest for a few days. 

So I have to properly schedule pretending to be young.  I get out my calendar, and make sure that I have social activities Monday through Friday, but no more than two.  Or, if it is a four day work week, I can trade up and sometimes do fun things three evenings in the week.  Appointments count for half a social event, because I don’t have to be outgoing and conversational on an appointment.  So if I have two appointments in a week, I can only have one social outing.  (one-half plus one-half, plus one, equals two.) 

I also have to factor in the weather.  In winter, the social events have to be held right after work, because once I am home in the winter, I cannot bring myself to go back out in the cold and dark.  In the summer, I can come home for a little while, then go back out because it is light out, unless it is very hot, then I want to stay in the air-conditioning.  So in the summer, I have to have the weather on while I am looking at my calendar, before I make a social commitment.

The weekends are even more complicated, because there is so much to do in two days, and I really need to have a three day weekend.  But, usually it’s two, so I have to move into an hourly schedule, and worst of all, I have to put time in there for cleaning, which I don’t seem to like any more now than I did when I was young.  Not very mature of me I know.

But in spite of all this, I do feel very young in my brain…and that is really good, because I have a sneaking suspicion that I will never again feel young in my body.  And if people want to say I look young for my age, then that’s okay with me…bring it on!  Just don’t see me walking very slowly in the morning, or getting my hair dyed, or the obvious, don’t see me naked, because even I try not to look at these things.  Who would?