Aged Mom, square head

You would think that with age would come wisdom. I mean isn’t that the generally accepted trade-off here? I’m going to get all wrinkled up like un-ironed linen, but will have the wisdom not to care a whit about it?

Well, something is wrong with the universe because I don’t seem a bit wiser and am very much worried about wrinkles. It seems as if you go to bed one day with the same face you’ve had for ages and wake up the next with age all over your face!

You’re next

Frankly, I don’t see why a person is not warned about this? What’s that you say? They are warned. Everyone since time immemorial knows that as you grow up, and older, you will age.

They know that your face will bear evidence of your journey down life’s path. That you will earn “laugh lines” (I’m not finding them the least bit funny by the way) and Crow’s Feet (the crow’s can have ’em, thanks).

Well, OK, sure. I do seem to recall that might have been mentioned once or twice. I’ve seen a few ads for wrinkle creams here and there. Anti-aging serums seem to be quite the booming business certainly.

Nonetheless, showing my age was never going to happen to me. I somehow just assumed that wrinkles would only happen to “other people.” Selfishly, I was OK with that.

The problem with the digital age and the Internet and all that is that sure, it allows me to work from home in my PJ’s, keep in touch with far-flung loved ones as if they lived next door, and keep abreast of what all the celebrities like Lindsay Lohan are drinking these days.

No control

Yet, on the other hand, it also allows other people to upload and share photos taken of me that I have no control over. Despite all it’s good points, the truth cannot be denied. The Internet is making me look bad. I am against this.

Like all vain people, I have been happily cruising through life, taking all the photos, rarely appearing in them, and generally destroying any photos that appear of me that are not flattering.

Unflattering photos of me on my camera must be vanquished to digital purgatory never to see the light of day again. This works for me.

Now, people that know and love me are uploading their own digital photos all over the place and I am finding out how those poor beleaguered celebrities feel when the paparazzi plasters them all over the pages of those “who has the most embarrassing beach bod?” photo spreads.

Or snaps a shot as they throw a sweater over their face and duck into the Mini-Mart for a moon pie they clearly could do without.

Square head

Thanks to the power of online photo sharing, I now chill to see photos of myself taken by friends and family. It turns out that I have an overly large, very square head. How can no one have told me this before?

I am apparently the last to know that I am a human caricature. As if finding out you have a misshapen melonhead isn’t shocking enough, I am also surprised to discover that I have an “11” between my eyes.

Yes, right there in a recently uploaded photo of me gazing off into the sunset (or probably the snack table if truth be known) there is in my otherwise familiar face an odd pairing of two side-by-side vertical wrinkles. They form a perfect “11” right between my eyes.

I started looking around and discovered to my surprise (ack, more wrinkles!) that nearly everyone I know over 30-something (ahem) has the same perpetually puzzled forehead.

How did I not notice this before? I guess this is what they mean when they say you never protest the unfairness of these sorts of things until the bell tolls for you … warned.

Evidence is clear

The evidence is irrefutable. I am not as young as I used to be. Worse yet is the nagging sensation that the universe is saying that all those “old people” (at the time in their 30s) who tried valiantly to warm my teenaged self against marinating in tanning oil while lying prone on an aluminum foil covered lawn chair for hours were right.

No, that can’t be. I cannot give my mother the satisfaction. When it comes to facing my future — and what is apparently ample evidence of my somewhat lengthy past in pictures — I’m definitely shocked to discover that I am aging.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the most recent ones I’ve seen of myself have a lot of explaining to do.