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Signs of Life

Nancy L. Horner

A Wrinkle in Time

A year-and-a-half ago I hit the dreadful age of 40, so I've suddenly become interested in current developments in wrinkle prevention and the world of plastic surgery in order to preserve what little I've got in the looks department. The news is good. A recent journal article about wrinkle-removal options described petroleum jelly as the safest and most effective treatment. Until someone manages to figure out how to turn the clock backwards so that we don't wrinkle at all, that seems like an excellent option to me.

I read the article to my husband, followed by a physician's column in which mention was made that petrolatum-based products can cause a serious type of pneumonia called lipoid pneumonia if inhaled. My conclusion: smear petroleum jelly on the wrinkles and don't breathe it in. I can handle that.

In spite of the doom of impending wrinkles, there's a lot to be grateful for when you hit the age of 40. I'm told I should be very thankful that I haven't yet reached 50, 60, or beyond, for one thing. "Just wait," friends have told me. "You'll remember being 40 fondly in ten years." On the other hand, as my dentist said, "Get used to aches and pains. It's all downhill from here."

By the time you reach my age, you can probably be thankful that you've successfully mastered the ability to nod politely when given unwanted advice, do your own thing, and not feel swamped with guilt for not listening to, for example, your mother. If you mess up, you realize your screw-ups are your own and you can handle them. On the other hand, by 40 you definitely know your elders have gained some wisdom and knowledge by virtue of having merely been around to experience life for so many decades. So, you know it's okay to call your mother out of desperation when you can't figure out how to get that mysterious stain out of your husband's shirt. That's provided, of course, that you're lucky enough to still have a living mother.

One major downfall of aging seems to be the fact that various body parts decide not to function the way they used to and the only options to keep things running are often pharmaceutical, if not worse. I had an interesting exchange with a Barnes & Noble clerk, one day, when I hadn't cleaned my purse for a while and had to remove my little bag of emergency medicine to locate the checkbook.

I told the clerk it was often hard to locate my money, these days, since it sometimes ended up buried beneath the fat little pouch.

"Oh, I've got one of those," the clerk said. We laughed about the fact that we both had emergency medicine for allergies and headaches, plus a supplement for whacked-up electrolytes. "I don't have to carry the emergency dizzy medicine anymore, though," she said with obvious relief.

"My sister has a fancy little contraption to keep her medications sorted out by the time of day and days of the week," she went on to say. "I think that's just silly. I keep mine in a Ziploc bag."

I nodded and smiled. "You think like I do," I told her. "I just dug in my cabinet till I found something that worked."

"It's a shame we have to drag all that stuff around," she said with a sigh.

"Aging sucks, doesn't it?"

"You bet," she said, handing me my books.

As I was applying generic petroleum jelly to the three major wrinkles I've earned, a few days later, my husband called out from the bedroom.

"What are you doing?" he asked. As usual, he was waiting for me to finish my lengthy bedtime routine, although this time he hadn't moved on to the "give up and snore" phase.

"I'm performing plastic surgery on myself," I told him.

""Be careful," he said, "not to inhale."

No problem, I thought. I survived college without inhaling. Honest.