FLATULENCE AND HIGH HEELS

Remember how we’d giggle when Grandma would walk across the room letting out little rectal noises? Never for a moment did we give thought that that might be us in twenty or forty years. Well, surprise, surprise here we are and now it’s us. What happened? Is it that our muscles have deteriorated so badly that not only can we not hold our tummies in anymore without an assistive device, but we have lost control over those humiliating and embarrassing bowel eruptions? What’s even worse is that we don’t even know it’s going to happen until it’s too late. What’s to do?

How do we handle it? Ignore it and hope and pray no one heard it? Blame it on the dog and hope there actually is a dog? Fess up and say, “Excuse me” and face the embarrassment? Becoming a senior with any grace doesn’t come with an instruction manual.

Why weren’t we better prepared for all the indignities of aging? Who in their right mind would refer to these as the “golden years”? Tell me just one thing that’s truly golden - or silver for that matter? Isn’t life just a big potpourri bag of surprises?

Speaking of surprises, do you remember “spike heels”? I wore them every day of my youth without giving them a second thought. In fact, when I was 18-years old I broke the metatarsal bone in my foot running across a street slamming my foot into the curb. Although my foot swelled to double its size, I managed to squeeze my aching foot into my size 5 spiked heels. Surprisingly, against all odds my foot healed anyway. Go figure.

Now, if that happened today, my foot would be wrapped, coddled, iced and laced up into one of those flat doctor boots for broken or nearly-broken feet. Chances are that even with all that care it would never heal and be normal again. But, when you’re twenty-something everything heals.

Shoes glorious shoes. They’ve always been a fetish of mine. That is until I grew past 40 and then suddenly, almost without warning, my once petite feet no longer could withstand the ache of having my feet perpendicular with the floor. (Can’t imagine why that would be.) And I’m not alone. Just about any women I speak to share the loss of wearing heels. After all, we all know how sexy a woman’s legs look in a pair of 3 or 4” heels. Come to think of it, gentlemen, I bet your legs would look mighty defined in a pair of heels!

So, now we emit unpleasant sounds when we least expect it - and to boot we do it in flats! Ain’t life grand?