I noticed a wiry gray hair sticking out of the side of my head the other day. At first I though it must belong to someone else, but when I tried to remove it from my own hair I found it was attached firmly to my own scalp. Now that I’m closer to 40 than 30 I guess gray hairs are just going to randomly attach themselves to me like leeches sucking all my youth out through their silvery strands. Am I being a bit too melodramatic?
Everyone ages. I’ve noticed how my parents and grandmother have changed over the years. I’ve pointed out the extra skin hanging from my parents’ jowls. They don’t like it when I do that. They have a harder time getting around. My father admits this too easily. My mother won’t admit it at all.
Aging was something I didn’t think about until I turned thirty-three. Now suddenly I have a few wiry gray hairs growing from the top of my head. One day I was at my sister’s house and she pulled a whisker from my neck! Where did that come from? I notice that my muscles are tighter in the mornings than they used to be. I have no idea about popular music these days. When I listen to the radio it’s to listen to the news on NPR. When I watch television, which is not often, I usually watch PBS or some news program. Are these signs of aging?
Some people get plastic surgery to push back the hands of time. I don’t have the money or courage to do something like that. Even though my behind is growing, I don’t want to have any fat sucked out of it. There are just certain things that shouldn’t be vacuumed.
The only other way I can think of to prevent aging is death. I narrowly missed having a very bad accident the other day and I can tell you that I’m not ready to die. So I guess I have to keep getting older and take comfort in the fact that there are still a lot of people who are older than me.
