Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Ahhhh...The Joys...

...Of Getting Older...

There you are one fine day, in a store or an elevator---anywhere Musak is inflicted upon the unwitting---and it hits you. The Musak is something from the 1980's, the height of your teenage years where all you worried about included the typical teenaged angst about zits, school, the opposite sex, whether the folks would let you take the car Friday night...

Wait a minute.

Didn't Musak used to be annoying instrumentals? Some hired choir murdering the popular songs of our parents' and grandparents' generations?

So. From this auspicious beginning of the signs you're getting older, the list just grows. And grows. And grows.

Laura's Top 10 Signs That We Are Getting Older (Whether We Want To Or Not)


1. We recognize the Musak and can sing along. (Which, if your kids are with you, is worth an extra 500 points because you publicly embarrassed your offspring.)

2. Stray black chin hairs. (Extra points if they're wiry and curly and stick straight out.)

3. Wrinkles. Laugh lines around the eyes don't bother me. It's about the canyons settling in over my upper lip. Do I really go around with pursed lips enough of the time for the grooves to set in? If they get any deeper, they'll be visible from space, just like the Grand Canyon and the Great Wall of China. Nifty. (As a consolation prize, you get 10,000 extra points when your wrinkles become visible from space.)

4. Gray hair. Okay. I don't have this problem. I inherited excellent gray hair genes from both my parents. However, I have friends of a similar age (+/-5-8 years) who have gone silver. I must say, it looks sexy on men. On women? Meh. Not so much, but I have seen several women who can carry it with aplomb.

5. Gopher Disease. All of a sudden, certain anatomical parts have the tendency to "Gopher the floor." Hold your arm straight out. Do you have batwings that are gophering the floor? In men, it's the hair that's suffering from gopher disease. Hair that grew on the top of the head is now heading south for other ports of call like ears, noses, and back, vacating the head forever. Very sad.

6. Remember when that commercial showing vehicles towing sani-huts was funny? So do I.

7. Your kids have(hopefully)been sleeping through the night for years. Too bad you don't any more. There's heart burn and indigestion. Restless legs. The Indianapolis 500 should take notes on your Midnight Potty Run 500.

8. You suddenly find you have something in common with Ozzie Osbourne: like Ozzie, you also want to know, "What's a Bieber?"

9. You look in the mirror and wonder when your mother's neck migrated to your own body. This can be especially traumatic for men.

10. You find yourself parroting things your parents said---things you SWORE you'd NEVER say to your own child. Things like, "You call THAT music?" "Back in *my* day, we had MOVIES. Dunno what you call that stuff coming out of Hollywood these days." "Don't MAKE me pull this car over." And the perennial favorite, "If your best friend jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?"

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