Now I know why Victoria Beckham never smiles in photos. Because smiling, apparently, causes wrinkles.
I don't know how many of you reading are "middle-aged," but I bet you remember where you were the moment you felt so. Maybe it was the first time someone called you "ma'am" in the grocery store. Or the moment when you were caught in the crosshairs of a brutally honest 6-year-old. Who publicly declared 27 was, by every definition, "old." Maybe it was the afternoon you caught a glimpse of yourself in the rearview mirror and...what is that?...a gray hair???
For me, it was last Tuesday at 3:11 in the afternoon. When I looked in the mirror and smiled big to see if I had anything from lunch caught in my braces. Only to discover...(gasping in horror)...w-r-i-n-k-l-e-s. And lots of them. The phrase "crow's feet" takes on a new form of nastiness when it suddenly applies to you. They don't look so bad when my face is in it's relaxed state. But when I smile, it's like a whole gaggle of crows. Cakaw, cakaw!!!
So I wish you could see the faces I've been making in my mirrors the last few days. Suddenly grinning like a lunatic every time I pass one to see if they're still there. Yep...still there, lunatic.
I remember my first gray hair. And where I was when I found it. But it didn't bother me one little bit. In fact, my mother has, and my grandmother had, the most gorgeous silver hair...evah. I can't WAIT until my hair goes all silver. It means no more tint jobs and highlights, thank you very much. And I'm looking forward to the day I can break out my inner Heloise (as in Hints From). Vixen Heloise.
But wrinkles...that just can't happen. I still feel like the 11-year-old little girl who went to Baskin Robbins with her Daddy Tug after a hard day at Emerson Elementary.
I wonder what Betty White would say to me. It's like WWJD, except WWBWD. I dreamed about her and Jake Gyllenhaal last night. I was walking in between them holding both their hands, like a little girl. It makes me laugh. Can you see that on an eHarmony profile? "Looking for Betty White in Jake Gyllenhaal's body."