Of Supermarket Skin Experts and lines on your face

Being young is no longer what it is used to be, or at least what my parents say it used to be. Once, not long ago, being young was about.. well.. just being young. Today, youth is no longer just about the youthfulness it entails; instead it is a splendid, shining gateway to (shudder, shudder) OLD AGE! Now being young is almost like being a terminally ill patient waiting through long hours of nail biting silence for that final moment when finally the hour would come, when the axe would fall, when the sun would set.. and the first wrinkle would emerge.

At 22 my local supermarket skin expert, a.k.a ask-me-hah-I-know-it-all tells me I’m already too old for an anti-aging cream. ‘It’s true’, she says coolly blow drying her fresh new magenta nail polish on her claw like fingernails. ‘I can see it coming right under your eyes right there’ she says with an ominous prophetic aura. I panic and check the mirror. Boy! And I thought pimples were my only trouble. It’s a desperate hour; I turn to her beseechingly with puppy dog eyes looking for answers. I have never been good with beauty. If it hadn’t been for my raging hormones I would have probably never woken up to the existence of make-up when I did (which to be honest wasn’t quite so long back). So, just when I thought I had it all under wraps here she was, the oracle herself telling me I would have wrinkles soon!

“There is of course a way out” she finally said, almost reading my thoughts and sounding a little too fairy Godmother’ish for my taste. Fortunately however she shed her saint like image sooner than I finished glancing over the bill she had handed me. A few gallons of lotions and creams that would “nourish” my skin (and leave my wallet severely undernourished) would fix me up for my ‘twilight years’ in no time, she said. ‘Massage upwards and breathe in” she said gesticulating with her paw like hands and taking one gigantic gulp of air. I looked at her in amazement almost reaching out for my pen to take notes. “Always chew your food slowly, else your facial muscles will go berserk…”. Who knew? I was already worshipping this woman in my head. “Exercise regularly” she added sagaciously “and no weed and alcohol…and definitely no sex”. Mother of God!! was she for real?

On my last birthday my mother gifted me a small torch, “to climb up the stairs in case there isn’t any light”. I use it every morning now to check for signs of new lines appearing on my forehead, around my lips and nose. These, the supermarket skin expert says are “surreptitious doorways for old age to creep in”. I haven’t yet decided what I shall do in case I do spot an extra line one of these days. Something tells me I won’t be able to scare it away with a broom or simply scream at it and make it flit away like a cat. But I will know soon. Apart from wrinkles age also brings with it a great deal of wisdom.