Not So Special After All

Scott and I, out with friends a week or so ago, told them about the Pick-Up Artist, the older gentleman who was trying to pick me up right by the pot of steaming hot potato soup at Eat ‘n Park’s® soup and salad bar.  Richard, who himself spends a couple of days every week at this same Eat ‘n Park having breakfast, buying cookies, stopping for coffee, and so on, described the Pick-Up Artist in great detail, right down to his height, weight, the type of shirts he wears, the cuffed khaki slacks, the brown loafers – well, you get it.  He then described, again in detail, the women the Pick-Up Artist has succeeded with.  He has someone much younger he takes walks with, some older women he sits on benches with, blonds he has dinner with, red-heads he takes to the movies.  There is always someone new – some are heavy, some are thin, some are pretty, some not so much, some are tall, some are short.  He tells them all they are very attractive. 

It seems I am not so special after all.  The Pick-up Artist picks up lots of women.  He is a serial Pick-Up Artist; an 88 year old player.

So now that I know I’m not so special I think I need to get my groove going again, lift my spirits and freshen up my look. 

So I ran right over to the Estee Lauder ™ make-up counter.  Simone always looks out for me to make sure I have everything from Estee Lauder that will improve my look and Estee Lauder’s bottom line. I bought some eye cream that is anti-line and anti-wrinkle, restoring serum that will correct lines and wrinkles, and plain old moisturizer that is somehow advanced so that’s a bonus.  I had to buy one set of the stuff for day and one set of the stuff for night.  I guess my skin does different things in the day than it does at night.  I can rest easy because I know that Simone is helping me stave off the need for a face lift.

I can tell you with certainty that I will never have Botox® injections or a face lift.  I know some women who have had them and I can see that at some point their faces stop moving and the look of wide-eyed surprise never goes away.  If you are old enough to have Botox or a face lift my guess is that life has already dealt you plenty of surprises.  Just getting up each day might be a surprise; you probably don’t need a face lift to help you look surprised.  These women always seem to say they’ve just had a good rest lately and changed their hair color. It just took place under anesthesia.

My mom had a couple of friends who’d had face lifts.  One friend looked great after her first face lift but she had a wrinkled neck and her hands had age spots and that gave it all away.  And of course, all her friends were in their 70’s and 80’s just like she was, so she always seemed to look surprised to discover that she had these old friends. 

Then there was Dolores.

Mom met Dolores in Pittsburgh when they were in the same golf league.  They were great golfing buddies but I never met Dolores or knew her to spend any time with my mom other than on the golf course.  After my mom moved to Florida, Dolores would call every so often just to say hello, but sometimes Dolores would tell my mother that she wanted to visit for a few weeks.  My mom would always tell Dolores that it wasn’t a good time for company or a visit.  This was mostly the truth because my mother had a bad heart and my step-father, Walt, was pretty old.  He died when he was 104 so we always said he was pretty old.  We said he was pretty old for a long, long time.

Late one night Dolores called and announced that just on a whim she had flown down to Florida to visit my mom, and that besides the slight problem of arriving at the wrong airport in the wrong city (OOPS!), one that was an eight hour drive from my mother and Walt’s house, she would take the bus and would be arriving the next day for a visit.  My mother cried and said again that it wasn’t a good time for a visit, she’d recently been having treatments for cancer, which was true, and wasn’t ready for any visitors.  But Dolores was adamant.  Mom couldn’t convince her not to come and she was not going to be mean.  She’d suck it up, make the best of it, and hope it was a very short visit.

Dolores arrived the next morning with a face that was black and blue, sporting very big sunglasses and wearing a turban over her hair.  Mom, trying to be polite and compassionate, screamed loudly enough for all the neighbors to hear, “What the hell happened to you?  Were you in a wreck?”  Dolores said there was no accident; she was recovering from a face lift and didn’t want the Pittsburgh folks to see her until she healed. The short visit might be more than a few days.  Her dentist had done the face lift.

Dolores had to sleep in the reclining chair with her head elevated and the next morning there was some blood running down Dolores’s neck, ears, and forehead.  My mom took her to the emergency room and the doctors got the bleeding stopped.  That night, while my mom and Walt were asleep, Dolores called a cab and left in the middle of the night to go to the airport and take a plane back to Pittsburgh.  My mother told me it was because Dolores’s facelift had fallen off.

So you can understand my reluctance to get a facelift. 

As long as I can keep tweezing that one wild hair on my chin before it’s noticed, getting anti-line, anti-wrinkle eye cream, restoring serum that will correct lines and wrinkles, plain old moisturizer that has the bonus feature making it advanced, visit the eye doctor less frequently so my vision remains just a tad blurred, continue to dye my hair, wear sleeved, turtleneck shirts that conceal my flabby arms and wrinkled neck, padded and lifting bras that put my breasts back close to where they used to be, flared skirts that conceal my drooping posterior, gloves to cover my hands, pedicures because I can no longer reach my toes…………….

Maybe I need to see the dentist.