Kissing Aunt Mildred

Oh let me sing you a song of youth, when I could bounce quarters off my stomach, it was such a trampoline like structure. Now if you toss one, it is absorbed into coconut drifts. Shake me and you get change for a five. The navel used to be a vertical slit upon the concave plain of abdomen, presently it sits sideways and looks sulky. The tatts I have on my back are beginning to fold in half, and it is starting to look like a good idea to pull up from the scalp and twist tie the excess skin in a knot on top. Enjoy, enjoy, oh best beloveds, for gravity wins.

I was sassy when my first job at the Twin Fair snackbar allowed me financial whee to purchase granny glasses and granny boots. The dam broke and the years of being huddled under a rock whiplashed onto a festive Yardley and Mary Quant holiday. I put on make up for the first time in my life at eighteen. Actually, my wild girlfriend painted me up before we walked ourselves over to a local bar. I so thoroughly regret the bar days, but that's another post with a lot of self-analysis, I was experiencing a rush of independence that eventually became a rut of stagnation. No ideas, no successes, no development of critical thought. Time does bite.

My second job fomented facially creative bliss as a cosmetician at a semi-elegant department store. I worked several cosmetic lines at once, all the leftovers no one else wanted. The companies would send you an allowance anywhere from $15 to $50 so you could choose products to try. I had to be conservative at work--one matron blew me in to the office for my black nail polish (early seventies, mind)--but Saturday night was glorious opportunity to shock and display.

I was born under the star sign of Elizabeth Taylor which meant I inherited my mother's sense of movie glamour. She had the blue creme stick eyeshadow and black pencil eyeliner, white powder under the arched brow; coral lipstick and rouge. I stepped up to the plate and swung into oranges combined with purple swashes of shadow, lips painted and glossed, gold metallics on cheeks and under the eye, that pearlized highlighter stuff on the upper lip, bright green mascara worn with dark green false eyelashes. Va va voom.

I rarely wear the stuff now, what a turn of events. Blush, lipstick and out the door; as a teacher, you have more power over children and can scare them a lot more if you don't wear makeup. Put on a sleeveless top so that arm hang flops back and forth and wear sneakers so they know you can run fast after them. It provokes thought, and they will hesitate for they know if you aren't wearing make up and freely let arm flab jiggle, that you have no fear of them. Let them look, wrinkles frighten them; you think of a time in childhood when you had to go up close to an old person, it's really a lot to ask of a kid.

Not only am I wrinkly and saggy, but I have moles and I can't tell you the advantages it promotes in my favor. Sometimes I put my finger on the large one and wiggle it back and forth, using a tiny tiny mole voice to say, "Pick up that pencil and get busy, or I'll get you." The kids don't know whether to laugh or cry. If they really get nasty, I tell them that I'll put the mole in their lunch.