Saturday I officially became a really old person. My brand new Medicare card is in my wallet, my knees hurt when I go up stairs, I have a pair of reading glassein every room, and I don’t know what photo bombing is. I knew I’d arrived when my six year old granddaughter was explaining that she went real bowling, not Wii bowling, and condescendingly explained that Wii was a game.

I’m writing this as I wait  twenty-five minutes for my Clairol’s Age Defy hair coloring to work. It is busy correcting the seven signs of aging hair. Who knew? I thought getting gray was my only problem.  But now I know that I must also worry that my once youthful tresses are apparently lackluster, coarse, frizzy, unruly, dry, and breakable.

Cosmetics manufacturers certainly know what they’re doing. They are acutely aware that baby boomers do not want to age gracefully. And so most of the various creams and lotions – and there are quite a few in my bathroom cabinet – have ‘age defying’ somewhere on the label. And if it’s not ‘age defying’, it’s ‘lifting’ or ‘firming’. If I had just thought to pickle myself in my twenties, maybe I wouldn’t have to use all this stuff.

Where did I go wrong? My mother used Pond’s cold cream and a smidge of lanolin for moisturizer and her skin was absolutely beautiful.

Oops! Time to see just how much age I have defied using this special coloring. Well, would you look at that? I appear to be ten years younger. Oh wait, let me put my glasses on. Oh dear. As Emily Litella would say, “Nevermind.”

*For you youngsters out there, Emily Litella was a brilliant, if often mistaken, spokeswoman for many SNL causes.