Gracefully?Ha!

No, you don't grow old gracefully. You may take it gracefully, but hey, you don't grow that way. Well, only if you can afford Botox, plastic surgery, laser and liposuction. And even then, it's a losing battle. Growing old happens to everyone. Yes, even you tight-skinned, nubile creatures who think you will live forever. Sorry, not so. Even you will grow old, older than your grandparents -  if you are lucky. Take a good look at them and form a composite and you've got yourself sixty years from now kiddies. Uhuh, your bones will creak. You will ache and you will get all sorts of nasty complaints that make you look like Frankenstein's bride - or groom. You can count on it. Old age is not golden nor is it something graceful. When you look at your wrinkles, you say, "where in the blank did that come from?". Sure, you use all the current ointments and creams and oils that are supposed to fix you, but none of them do and don't let the ads that show a thirty year old belly-aching about her crow's feet and how if you use such and such, you will look like you are nineteen again. Now that is funny. Your crow's feet have become horses hooves and nothing will take them away. So what can you do? Not a jolly thing but try to be graceful at least until your kids, your inheritors, tool off down the driveway and then you can swear like all get out and thrash about but get nowhere and still grow older - just as they will do when their time comes. It's life, as They say. (I'd like to meet Old They one day and have a word or to with that so and so. What They does is not good and we all know it and blame They all the time. They say and They do and They did it. But you, you're the one you have to look at in the mirror. You're the one who has to don those glasses and suffer that hip and that knee.) You are told by your young ones to get out and exercise more, go to the gym if you want to lose weight, jog and eat vegetables and more red meat and you'll be just fine. Dream on. What I need more of is red wine - go figure. And, yes, the figure has gone. Where to, is a mystery. Fooey on the old folk who don their Nikes and try to run every day in the park. They pass me sweating and panting and groaning softly while thinking they are running and all I can see is a slow walk with an attitude. Excuse me, it's time for my nap!