Facelifts

I have a friend who makes no bones about the fact that "she's had some work done."  She is a cutie, and often when we are out in public, men much younger than she, hit on her.  She's happily married, but it brightens up her day to have men tell her how attractive she is.

Originally I thought this was kind of weird.  It seemed like it led her into kind of a weird conversational imbalance.  But today I was thinking about it and now I'm not so sure.

When we first moved to Long Beach, my mother was in her early 80's.  Where ever she had ever lived, my mother had always attracted interesting friends.  She was smart and funny and had had adventures all over the world.  But because she was old and frail when she moved here, people tended to disregard her.  It would make me feel bad for her when people would speak around her to address their comments to me.  She was still the same person inside, but people became very condescending.

So now  my friend is getting older (she will be 60 on her next birthday) and people still respond to her as if she was 40.  In a way I think that's weird, but perhaps when she's 80 people will still take her seriously.  It will be curious to see how old people are treated as the baby boomer generation becomes old.

As for me, I'll just follow in my mom's footsteps and look how old I am.  If people get too out of line, I'll do what she used to do and threaten to hit them with my walking stick.  Whippersnappers.