Fountain of Youth

“Step right up. Take a dip in the Fountain of Youth. Lie about your age. Add five years!”

bbbbOnce you pass the halcyon age of thirty-five, that Golden Mean in time when we women are at our dewiest and sexiest, you start wishing clocks traveled backwards. You no longer yearn to reach a future time where you can drink, vote, smoke, drive a car, or have sex without someone waving a placard about your underage promiscuity.

bbbIt’s at that age I discover the Fountain of Youth. I’m standing at a cosmetic counter mulling over backward-running timepieces that will, hopefully, prevent the impending wrinkles and sags that are to be my future for the next sixty plus years. As my family’s expiration dates are usually at about one hundred years, I know my face and I are in for quite a slog in our quest to defy gravity.

bbbThe salesperson chirps,“What can I help you find?”
bbb“Something to stop the stride of time on my face.”
bbb“How old are you?”
bbbCounter-intuition jumps in. “Forty.”
bbb“Reeeaaally? You look fabulous!”
bbbSuddenly, whenever I can weave it into the conversation, I even tell strangers I’m forty years old. And every time, I hear some version of, “You look marvelous, darling. Keep up whatever you’re doing.”bbbSo, for forty years I’ve kept it up—adding five years to my age.
bbbHere’s what’s amazing: The longer I do this, the more the years keep ticking off my face. Now that I’m cuddling up to seventy-five, the more myopic folks, glancing down at my late-in-life stomach (should have exercised more between bouts of lying about my age) ask, “When’s your baby due?”
bbbNever offended, I say, “Thank you for thinking I’m young enough to get pregnant.” And then they ask the secret of my youth.

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You will find more stories just like this one in my new book Stories from a Global Cowgirl… “Don’t Put a Cat on Your Head!” Available on Amazon