Remember the song “Maggie May,” where Rod Stewart sings, “the morning sun when it’s in your face really shows your age?” I’m there. I look pretty good for a woman on the slippery slope to the big 6-0. And I have been known to play the how-old-do-you-think-I-am game. It used to be more fun, though. Now I get a lot of “Wow! You don’t look that old!” comments. I’m never sure that one’s a compliment or not.

TV commercials are not helping. According to them, I don’t have laugh lines I’ve got crows’ feet. Where did that term come from anyway? I mean if I’ve got crows’ feet, what the heck are the crows using for feet? Smile lines, no. ‘Parentheses,’ yes. I’ll bet in 10 years no one will even remember that parentheses are “marks used in punctuation.”

And, since I’m in a whining mood, I’m just going to say it. Why are these child actresses, not a one over age thirty, trying to sell me skin cream for dermatological calamities they don’t even have yet? I think the only market for these products are the thirty-somethings watching the ads. The rest of us either don’t care or are too tired to take up valuable time smearing our faces with anti-wrinkle cream.

I saw a commercial with Ellen DeGeneres some weeks back. She’s hawking something I call crevice cream caulk. It’s got these rolly make-up beads that run around your face and collect in the wrinkle-cracks and fill them up, hiding them. Right. I have a good friend, ex-beauty queen. She desperately wanted to fill up her face cracks and bought some of this stuff. I’m telling you those floating make-up beads not only filled the cracks, they overflowed them and ran off her face like the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. It was ugly. She cried. Went right out and got eyeliner tattooed around her eyes to make herself feel better, along with an extra-large trowel to apply her Mary Kay foundation. I’m just too lazy and cheap to spend the kind of money and energy my friend does to beat back aging with a stick.

That’s not to say I have not noticed some other changes. I’m going to be as delicate about this as I can, so use your imagination, this is a family publication.Some of my key body parts have gotten bigger. Mostly they’re heading south. Which, as my husband likes to point out, means they are longer, and longer is not bigger. “Tomaato, tomahto;” the result is the same. If I hike them back up into place, they appear to be bigger.

Everything that’s not tied down is moving south; including the hangy-down part under my chin, and the hangy-down part under my arms—technically called ‘arm dangle.’ The most disturbing discovery turned out to be instant face lift. Do not ask how I know this. If you lie down on your back and hold a mirror over your face you look at least 15 years younger; it’s called gravity. But if you reverse positions, put the mirror on the bed and hang over it, you get the fright of your life, or laugh your derriere off. I wonder if that will stop it from leaving for the Caribbean, too?

Cohea, a freelance writer, can be reached by e-mailing a37_tao@hotmail.com.