Forty

This may not be news to many of you, but being forty sucks! Being a 40-year-old mom with small children sucks even more. While many of your body parts deteriorate, the waste your body produces seems to excelerate, both in quantity and size. Take nose boogers for example. I swear I didn't have them until this year. I don't ever remember picking my nose (eww). You know you're getting old because you notice more of the unpleasant aspects of your own body. Hair starts to sprout in new, bizarre, and not-so-desirable places. You may still get the occasional pimples, but they come out in the most painful spots, like inside your nose, in an eyebrow, or right on the outline of your upper lip. Your skin's dry and you sweat more. Your digestive system seems to have never-ending mood swings. No matter what you do (or don't do), there's no telling what's gonna happen tomorrow.  

You smell more, and I'm not talking about your sense of smell. Remember in your early 20s when you had just spent hours under the sun, members of the opposite sex might find the way you smelt 'attractive' or, dare I say, 'sexy'? You were so young and radiant and confident that you could care less if s/he lied just to get into your pants. You knew you smell good. It's called pheromone, and that's what it does. Now I'm happy if I have time to take a shower, and when my husband says to me when I come out of the shower, "Mmmm... You smell good," my reaction is usually, "Really?" and I take a whiff of my armpit just to make sure. Not that I think he might lie. It's just that so rarely do I (feel like or think that I) smell good these days, I have to make sure I actually do.

 

You also scratch more. The fact that your skin gets drier obviously contributes to this new past time activity, but I also find even my eyes and nose... even my forehead itch more. I'm like a baseball couch signaling my players what to do next. Oh, and the itchy scalp! When I was young...er, I always wondered why hair washers at beauty salons in Taiwan always ask customers, "Does your scalp itch?" or "Is there anywhere (on your scalp) you'd like me to attend to?" Now if one if them ask me that, I can totally see myself putting my head to one side with my eyes closed saying, "Oh yeah! That's the spot right... there!" Hopefully one of my feet won't start tapping the floor.

 

Speaking of scalp and hair, what's with all these grays that are popping out all over the place? Even though I just dyed my hair not long ago, I'm still finding shiny silvery grays on the top of my head!! Every time I pull one out, I hear Andie MacDowell's voice from that hair color commercial, "And grays? What grays?" and feel the urge to punch her in the face. She lied!

 

This next and last one is, in my opinion, the most disturbing. You lose your ability to provide sufficient muscular control over certain bodily functions. I don't mean you poop in your pants (though I've heard female friends who gave birth vaginally discuss occasional leakage while laughing), but even things as seemingly insignificant as a sneeze. Sneezes in the old (or should I say, young) days were short and... dainty, and you actually had some control over the intensity in which they came out by holding them in a bit. The results are cute little "a-choo"s that could make the manliest of all manly men go goo-goo-ga-ga 'cause, with sneezes like baby sneezes, you were just so damn cute and vulnerable! My sneezes these days scare the crap out of my husband because they just come out without warning (lack the control I was talking about) and they're loud and violent as hell. This also applies to what happens at the rear, which I will not elaborate (You're welcome). I'm sure you get what I'm trying to say.

 

And the list goes on.

 

Despite all these physical changes, I really don't feel 40. The fact that I'm taking the piss out of the whole turning 40/getting older thing clearly indicates that I have not lost my childish child-like qualities. And that's all it matters, isn't it? 40. Bring it on.

 

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; We grow old because we stop playing." -- George Bernard Shaw

 

 

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