Who Knew God Was Such a Jokester

I’m convinced that God in His or Her wisdom diminished our eyesight just in time for us not to see the changes years would put upon us. Why else would our mane thin while we suddenly grow dark, thick and unruly hairs on our chins or our upper lips? Guys, you haven’t faired much better. God certainly has a sense of humor: hair in your ears, bald domes and beer bellies (well, thankfully, not all of you)!

Speaking of eyesight, do you know anyone over forty who doesn’t carry around a pocket pair of magnifying eyeglasses? Hair or the lack of it is not the only matter of humor here. Nay, there’s enough hilarity to go around and around and around that widening girth of ours.

I remember being svelte and demure. Back then I never doubted I always would be, but once again there were other plans for me… Okay, so our hair is thinning and growing in places we would never choose to have hair, our eyesight is blurring and our waistline is hardly a “line”. What else could He or She throw at us?

Well, there’s a hint towards the sagging of nearly every thing, which promises only to get worse; there’s bunions on our corns and ankles have given way to canckles; and for some of us there’s Fixadent and Polident and teeth in a jar in our future. Let’s face it, that heavenly God of ours has a raw sense of humor...or is it just that we were created in His image? OMG, what a vision does that conjure?

We Baby Boomers are not going to take this quietly. We’re going to make plastic surgeons very wealthy individuals. There’s a growing industry devised to assure our “forever youth”. You have but to turn on the television set or watch the plethora of commercials pandering to our self-image.

There’s whitening for our yellowing teeth, liposuction for our abuses at the dinner table, Botox to abracadabra those laugh lines and smile lines away; silicone and saline for breasts gone south or north or east or west; there’s penile implants and drugs that sustain or enlarge.
There’s potions to rub upon our balding heads, miracle creams to smear across those widening pores, and elixirs to swallow that promise everything from recovery from pain to everlasting energy and no doubt soon to promise nirvana.

We certainly live in amazing times. But as we age ever so gracefully, and surely better than our parents did, all around us are reminders that our world is changing and not in a way any of us would have chosen. Some might argue that aging is a wondrous thing - and true enough, just the accomplishment is worthy of note, but I doubt if it were feasible that any one of us could halt this process that we wouldn’t.