Gray Hair "Down There" and Some of the Other Indignities of Growing Old

Oh, the indignities of growing old.  They are broad in scope and without number. 

I started going gray when I was in my mid or late 20s.  But, it wasn’t anything I was going to get overly excited about.  It was only one or two and I only really noticed them when I was in bright light and they were sticking straight up out of the top of my head like my head had been discovered by an outside nation and they planted their flag in claim.  I’d always look at it with a mixture of exasperation and smug joy.  The exasperation came from the mere fact that it was so very obtrusive, so proud to be intruding that it just had to stand up tall.  But that smug joy?  Well, that came from being absolutely convinced that that gray hair would bring many more with it and once they stood unified, I would be looked at with a certain measure of respect for the very fact of being old…er.  Y’see, I have what’s known as a baby face.  I could post my first grade class photo and anybody who knows me would take no time at all to identify me amid the cluster of faces.  Problem is, since then, they only come in at the rate of approximately two per year.  They’re not helping the “baby face” situation…at all.  They do, however, subject me to the occasional comment about them from some student who is taller than I.  Fabulous.

Gray hair notwithstanding, growing old has brought a really interesting set of changes to my life.  And read “interesting” as “what the fuck?!” 

How about the morning’s first pee?  You know, the one that starts just as I’m pulling my PJ bottoms down?

That’s not good enough for you?  How about those little red freckles appearing on your chest?  Yeah…those are cute…if you’re trying to look like a six year old with chicken pox…or, even better, a teenager with wayward bacne.  Great.

The sneezing/farting syndrome, an (or two) errant chin hairs, less than perky breasts, looser extra weight than before, the inability to eat one peanut’s worth of calories more than your scientifically calculated recommended daily caloric intake without either gaining weight or being constipated for three days.  Gahd! 

But all those things…every single one of them would be rather tolerable were it not for the truly astonishing discovery of one single gray hair “down there”!  DOWN THERE!! 

In glancing down whist perched on the bowl one afternoon, something odd caught my eye.  At first, I thought, “Can’t be!”  I was SURE that it was a reflection of the light pouring in from the skylight just overhead…and a few feet to the left…and a foot or two forward.  But light does funny things….right?  Right?? 

A shift in the offender’s placement proved to me that, no matter what  the light was doing at that precise moment in time, it wasn’t reflecting off of the single hair that was, in fact, gray.

Dammit.

How Much is Too Much (or Too Much Too Soon)?

Not that I would expect anybody to know me, but I’m not the kind of woman who likes to waste time.  In anything.  I don’t like to “look busy” or “stretch it out” or any of those other work-related, time killing sentiments.  I don’t like to diddle around with inching into the pool or creeping off a band-aid millimeter by millimeter.  I get my work done when it’s done, I jump right in and I rip the band-aid off in one quick jerk.  To me, anything else is just stupid—and leaves way too much room for second guesses, hesitations and chances to back out.  And trust me when I say that if I’m given the chance to back out of something…mmm…edgy, I might, citing prudence. 

So, keeping all that in mind, I suppose it should now not surprise you to see me say that I have a tendency to talk too much.  Now, when I say that, I don’t mean to imply that I’m that person from whom you’re trying to extricate yourself during a conversation in a street corner, coffee shop, bar, hallway, parking lot, grocery story, theatre lobby, classroom, grocery store checkout line, etc.  I only mean that to say that I don’t talk about things of insignificant consequence to my life.  I don’t discuss weather or sports, I can’t have any kind of intelligent political discourse (due only to being woefully ill-informed) and when it comes to religion, to me, there’s nothing to discuss. 

Once you remove those easy stand bys from your topics of choice list, everything else gets a tiny bit more personal…well, I can fall back on movies and music, but that too, is almost a little more personal than makes people comfortable. 

And honestly, I feel a little put out by that.

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s not that I seem to believe that I have something so monumental, so inspirational, so awe-inspiring that I yearn to get the message out to all who will listen…it’s just…well…let’s cut through the bullshit and see where it gets us.  Let’s lay it all out and see what happens. 

Unfortunately, it’s been my experience that I might just be in the minority.  Again.  Now…I’m not saying that I feel it necessary to inform people of a rabid case of explosive diarrhea (a story one of my co-workers blessed me with this morning; remind me to thank her for that start to my work day), I just don’t hide things or evade questions very well.  And I’m ok with that.  I’m ok if people know that my father is an asshole of this highest caliber or if I spent a year of my life in a blur of Molson beer and pot smoke before I managed to get my shit together…somewhat.  It’s a part of my life, it shaped who I am and whether I’m shamed or proud, I own it.

Now…ante up.

Women!

Aren't they something? 

When I finally was able to put a word...a concept to that gigantic crush that I found I had on Wonder Woman (at the tender age of 6 or so) I didn't do much looking back.  Of course, finding another out teenager in 1984/85 when I first poked a toe out of the closet in that exact same way you poke your toe into the pool before you just haul off and jump in, was literally impossible.  So, for a very short spell, I paddled over to the boys side of the pool--half heartedly, but over there anyway.

Don't think, for a minute though, that I ever stopped looking at the girls by which I was surrounded.  And boy howdy, did I look.  Eyes and hands.  Those were the first things that I started noticing.  Having been born with rather banal brown eyes and short fingers, I always noticed the girls who had different colored eyes or (and, dear Jesus, help me to breathe, "and") long fingers and strong hands.  I could just fall in love right then and there.

My tastes haven't evolved much over the years.  Lynda Carter is still, to this day, the epitome of my lustful oglings, though t combination of dark hair and dark eyes also does me in fairly easily.  Although, I can almost always find something about a woman that will attract me to her. 

Which brings me to tonight.

I had dinner at a...uhh...friend (?)'s house.  Before i go on, the best way that I can explain away the question mark is to say that since it is SO very early in my acquaintance with her that I don't even know what to call it yet.  "Friend" seems like a little bit of a presumption, but I guess when you have dinner with someone at their house, it makes you something more than just a passing face in the crowd.  In any regard, I had dinner with a woman, that isn't my girlfriend, tonight.  And what's more, the likelihood that I'm going to tell my girlfriend is fall leaf thin. 

Moving right along...

So, "She" and I are talking over dinner and a glass (or two) of wine and I am watching her as she speaks.  There are points in the conversation that she's looking at me, and there are parts where she looks away and speaks to nothing in particular.  It was during one of these glances away that it happened....

While I certainly wouldn't ever deign to say that she is not attractive, it's not something that I work too very hard at thinking about.  And while I wouldn't ever try to feign that I wasn't just a tiny bit attracted to her, I work especially hard at not feeling that.  But then, as she was speaking, she dropped her head down and a tiny bit to the side.  In doing so, a part of her hair worked itself from behind her ear and fell down alongside her cheek bone and hung there for a few seconds before she corralled it, once again, behind her ear. 

But, can I just say, when her hair dropped, I about did as well.  It was a singularly feminine gesture and i felt its presence when it made a knot in my stomach that worked straight up, manifesting itself in my cheeks as a sunburn.  For one brief moment, I lost complete track of what she was saying and fantasized myself tucking that piece of hair back behind the ear from which it fled. 

It was mind blowing.

A Rose By Any Other Name....Right?

When is a date just a date and not a DATE? 

Never having been real good at figuring shit out, I never know what I'm supposed to be doing or how I'm supposed to go about doing it?  I know.  You'd think that at 40....

Anyway

I used to ask people what the difference between paranoia and intuition was.  I mean...you get a feeling or a thought or even just a stirring and you can't help but wonder to yourself, "Am I just being paranoid or is this going to come back to bite me in the ass?"  And really, there's never any way of telling until it's too damn late and nothing has happened, leading you to look around warily to see who was paying enough attention to make you feel stupid, or something gigantic has happened that leads you to then berate, "I KNEW I should have listened to that voice in my head!"

That's kind of like this whole date thing is for me.

I've asked people what their opinion was...asked them about the point when a date goes from two friends out to dinner, movie, monster truck rally to a DATE where there is an expectation of SOME sort of touchy feely something.  Honestly, I've gotten a lot of strange looks...ones I've translated, in my head, to mean, "Can you really be that retarded?"  I've gotten a couple of, "You just know"s.  I've even gotten a few, "Who cares?!  You shouldn't be going out with another woman anyway!"  Oh yeah, and then there was the one, "Go, have fun; you can even use my apartment." 

:-|

Asking my mother the hypothetical (which we both know isn't hypothetical at all and are both fine pretending that it really is), her sage advice was to set boundaries before one even makes plans.  That way, while you don't ever really wind up knowing what might have been, you will end up knowing what will be. 

I hate my mother.

So.  What have I decided?  Did I take my mother's advice?  Someone else's? 

That's mighty nosy of you, wouldn't you say?

Perhaps someday, I will share.

Remember When

Remember when you were 12 or 13 and you and your friends were waiting at the mall for your mother to come pick you up and drive everybody home?  And do you remember the feeling when she showed up and she had only remembered to put make up on one eye and had left one roller in her hair in the back?  That feeling never goes away, does it?  Not even when you’re 40.

My mother is a woman who stands on sentiment and familiarity.  She finds comfort in the nostalgic and seeks solace in habit.  I understand; I am her mini-me after all.  However, I have given up much sentimentality and living more pragmatic ways.  Don’t get me wrong, I did briefly contemplate saving the hair I’d plucked from my chinny chin chin last night, but it’s not what you think.  For days before, I had been sure it was there and was just eluding the pinch of the tweezers.  I had fairly gouged my chin in an effort to get at it over and again.  All I’d succeeded in doing was bleeding and scabbing and then mistaking the scab for the hair and beginning the cycle of insanity all over again.  Anyway, yesterday, as I was sitting in an in-service, I found myself, once again, worrying at my chin and lo and behold if I finally hadn’t managed to find the elusive hair!  I couldn't be more excited to get home, go run upstairs and pluck the offending little thing from its stronghold.  Which I did.  And for the briefest of moments, I gave some serious thought to tucking the little bastard into some scrapbook.  It had occupied so many of my waking thoughts and moments that I felt, almost, connected to it.  (Insert stupid attachment joke here)

All that to say that I understand attachments to things, no matter how seemingly insane that it is.  When, on Easter, my mother had presented me with a paper bag holding half a dozen or so plastic eggs with candies inside of them, I was not surprised.  And, if you think that the fact that she gave them to me in a paper bag is odd…no, it’s not.

I opened one or two of them…mini Reese’s cups or small foil wrapped chocolate miniatures were inside of some, a few jelly beans in others.  All in all, I was actually pretty pleased, as, even if I’d sat down and eaten what was in every single one of them, I wouldn’t be putting myself in a caloric position to have to skip dinner later. 

Over the next couple of days, I was pretty good about rationing myself an egg or two whenever I thought about it and when I’d exhausted all of the sugar, I set the plastic eggs aside in a pottery bowl on top of the china cabinet until I could ask my mother if she wanted them back.  And promptly forgot about them.

My mother came over last night to help me do a few things and she’d evidently seen the eggs on top of the china cabinet, as she mentioned them when we were sitting in a booth waiting for our dinner to get to the table. 

“Do you know where I got your Easter eggs?”

Insert quizzically fearful look, “I don’t dare ask.”

“Well, you know the ****’s house?”

“Oh dear god.  Mooom!” (Although with my Buffalo accent it came out “Maaahm!”  Pretty.)  I couldn't imagine what she was going to wind up saying, but I knew that this story was headed somewhere I wasn't going to like.

Mom bursts out laughing.  “Sophie (the big headed, smiling pit bul….sorry…Staffordshire Terrier) and I were out walking the night before Easter and they had put them out all over their lawn…”

“Mom!”

“Well, I wouldn’t have taken any if there wasn’t a ton of them out there!” she justified…and still laughing.

“And you aren’t in the least bit embarrassed to be saying this?!”

“Why should I be?”

And that’s my mother for you. 

I hope this helps to clear a few things up.