Mirrors and Headlamps

I was in the changing room of a store pulling up a pair of corduroys when I noticed a big cellulite ridden bum sagging away in the mirror in front of me. Whose terrible behind was that, I thought out loud? Can't that stupid woman close the door and then take her pants off? That's when it struck me that the bum was mine, reflected in one of those weird angled mirrors that lets you stare ahead at your own back view. I sat down for a moment, corduroy pants at my knees. How in blazes did that part of me get to looking that bumpy and amorphous?

By the time I recovered from the shock of being the owner of the bulging bean-bag bum, I thought I would do a little more snooping. Turned around and had a look at other bits of me. Everyone looked like they had headed a little south from where I had seen them last. Back muscles, neck muscles, arms, the twins. Everybody! A friend had told me that childbirth does that to you. The ageing process is suddenly accelerated. Skin loses its elasticity from the weight fluctuations, the stomach looks like an estuary photographed from above and the behind looks like a detailed road map of Manhattan. The visual tour was a little too much for me. I quickly pulled on my pants and left the store in a state of blissful denial. This is the problem with changing rooms in big, plush stores, I told myself. They have too many lights, too fine carpeting, fancy fans, sexy background music and and standing in there, contrasted against all that finery makes you look like a sorry excuse of Nature. There was nothing wrong with me. I am sure if I looked at my behind in the soothing light of the lampshade at home, it would look as burnished as a baby's bottom. So there.

It struck me with a sense of panic that I had slowly begun the descent into the Geriatric state.

At a beauty store last week, I was looking at some shampoos when a sales girl, a young thing in her early twenties, sweetly asked me " Anything else ma'am? Foundation, Eye-shadow, Blusher? Maybe some Wrinkle-lift cream?". My smile dropped two floors and splotched in an ugly mess like a rotten mango. Wrinkle-cream? What did she think I was, 87 that I needed Wrinkle Cream?!? "I don't use any such fancy things", I said coldly. She was quite thick I guess, not detecting the thick displeasure in my voice and swinging the magnifying mirror towards me ( another irritating invention like the headlamps they put in changing rooms), said " After 30, ma'am, we get crow's feet and laugh lines and the start of wrinkles. See for yourself". I was horrified at her brashness. If that wasn't bad enough, what stared back at me from the mirror was even more alarming. Forget crow's feet, the stuff around my eyes looked like some disgusting cellular-webbing straight out of a B-grade Hollywood Creature-movie. There was something like Satan's pitchfork running across my forehead, the sunspots looked like utility ditches and the surface of the skin was like a grapefruit peel. I grabbed my shampoo and ran.

Back home, I got onto the Net. And clicked on the first of 29,700,000 results for "Ageing". None of it was pleasant. There were attempts to make the process easier for people by calling it "an ascent to wisdom" and "lines of maturity" and "respectable state" and what not. Then there were the cold, clinical articles that talked about immobility, instability, incontinence, imapired intellect and many such intimidating "i" worded things. There was an article on Adult Diapers, Walking Sticks and Wheelchairs.

The better part of my morning was spent on reading what other women did in their sword fight against age. Plastic surgery, Botox, Yoga. I read that Sophia Loren's statistics are virtually unchanged to this day. It amazed me to see the queries that women sent to experts to ask questions about hanging onto their good looks. It struck me that if Ponce De Leon had been alive today, there would have been many a rich matron who would have funded his expeditions in search of the Fountain of Youth.

When my husband came home, I asked him a few casual questions about the computer. What did this icon and that key do? How did google work as a site? Finally steered the conversation around to what I REALLY wanted to know- "how to delete the History" from the computer. God alone knows what the man thought ( perhaps the bored housewife was surfing porn or flirting with some online boys?) but being too trusting and inherently decent, simply told me how to do it. The last thing I wanted anyone to find out was that I was looking at " Stop the Ageing Process", "Everlasting Youth" or some such fantastic rubbish. I was just another woman who had picked up a nice sturdy straw-sword in my crusade against Ageing.

Pssst. Don't tell anyone but I went snooping back to the store with that young-thing sales girl and got something called Recova. Supposed to keep the wrinkles at bay. Heh heh. Shall post some before and after pictures in a while. You tell me how it has worked...