Tuesday 27 May 2014

I'M TOO YOUNG TO BE THAT OLD

Something is dreadfully wrong with mirrors these days. They all make me look old. Every time  I look at one, I see an elderly man staring back at me. How can this be? Is that grumpy old fart really me?

Whatever happened to the ambitious and idealistic young man I used to see each morning as I shaved? All that thick brown hair seems to have turned grey. The face seems to have wrinkles in it. Odd how that has happened. Are those worry lines I see?

That bathroom mirror also makes the top of my head look bald. How can that be since I still feel hair there. It must be a trick of the light. These cork-screw bulbs the hardware and big box stores sell these days don't have the comforting warm glow of incandescent lamps. Yeah, it must be those lights that are to blame for the optical illusion.

The clothing I see each day in my bathroom mirror has changed as well. Gone are the dress shirts and T shirts. Now I see hoodies and sweatshirts that the man in the mirror is wearing. Both look so frumpy to me.

And whatever happened to those nerdy horn-rimmed glasses with real glass lenses? Now the frames are wire and the plastic lenses are rectangular, not square-ish. How can anybody see out of silly-looking glasses like that.

I can't possibly be that bulgy either. What happened to my size-32 waistline. The one in the mirror seems to have gone to waste. I've also seen sacks of potatoes with fewer lumps poking out than that belly.

No doubt about it, mirrors aren't like they once were. I'd have my bathroom one replaced but all the others show the same thing. Maybe I can go to one of those building recycling stores and find a decent mirror, one that reflects my image the way it ought to look. Until then, I'll have to use my imagination to fill in the missing brown hair and thin waistline. I'll need to add the dress shirts and T shirts in my mind to that impossibly-old image I now see as well.

But seriously, I've written three memoirs. The one about my rabbits and childhood at a school for the blind are available through the Bruce Atchison's books link. How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers.

2 comments:

  1. you have a good Heart the book who have wrote

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  2. You're not the only one who feels this way. I'll be turning 53 on Sunday. You'll say, "Oh, that's not old," and you'll probably be right, but six years of caregiving and unexpected widowhood have made me feel somewhat ancient. The bright side is that people have told me I don't look a day over thirty.

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