8.26.2007

The Power of Suggestion


Everyone knows I love to talk. And I especially enjoy hearing the intimate details of your lives that you might not share with your mothers. So tell me anything. Tell me everything.

Except.

Those of you over 35, spare me, please, the little aging-related gems whose mere suggestions seem to trigger my own physical degeneration.

Honestly. My friend Josie is the biggest culprit. When we were just days into thirty, she casually asked if I'd noticed my heels cracking, because hers were cracking and bleeding like her mom's. According to Josie, this was a normal part of leaving your twenties, and she was prepared to inform me all about pumices and foot creams.

My own heels were, until that very moment, as smooth as Bill Clinton. By the next morning, though, I could feel the thickening of skin, along with the tug and sting of the first crack. So when a couple of years later, Josie asked me if I was having trouble reading the small print on things like Tylenol bottles, I feared it would only be a matter of hours before I'd be shopping for DebSpecs, and it was true. Now I remind my friend to think before she speaks.

Unfortunately, it sounds rude to tell co-workers and newer friends to watch what they say regarding gray hair, irregularity, varicose veins, and liver spots. So I have Dianna to thank for the early-onset hot flashes, Claire for the skin tags, and Regenia for the sudden thickening of my middle that's making me feel like a soup can with legs.

Everyone, my mother included, needs to stop "preparing" me for what's to come (Thanks to Mamoo's observations about older men, I'm really looking forward to sex in my fifties--NOT). We don't talk to our young daughters about stretch marks, cystitis or vibrators until they already have them or feel the need to ask. I beg for the same courtesy; let me rock on in my blissful ignorance to discover these things in their natural course.

If I'm lucky, I'll be sixty before I get my first bunion.

7 comments:

Jennifer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jennifer said...

Ooh...what did Mamoo say about older men? One of my professors told me that none of them could even think about getting it up once they turned 50. And speaking of Mamoo, have you had the forty-something moment yet where you look at yourself naked in the mirror and realize, for the very first time, what you're really seeing is your mom's ass, her boobs, her thighs...? At least you've got a younger husband to defile.

ktothefe said...

T--for the record, my ankles have been cracking for a while now.....especially the day after a good run...

as far as knowing a little intimate detail about my life that few people know: I can NEVER go into a bathroom RIGHT after someone has left it. Ever since second grade. I will NEVER do it. And if I see someone else going into the bathroom as I approach, I will move on and wait. I HATE being in a public bathroom with someone else in it.

Anonymous said...

Tania and Jennifer- I turn 50 next April. Thanx for giving me something to look forward to...maybe I should just shoot myself now...

Tania Rochelle said...

Viva Viagra, ads.

Anonymous said...

speaking of feet, did i tell you that your toenails get yellow when you get old?

Anonymous said...

and, jennifer, bite your tongue. my but-tock and other body parts are three times the size of tania's.

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