Lily Munster and I Do Not Feel Old

Herman loved her exactly as she was.

According to a recent study, the sexes vary greatly regarding the age when we start "feeling" old.

Women, supposedly, feel old at 29. Or, when they start finding their first gray hairs. 

I found mine at 27 but that didn't make me feel old at all. It did, however, make me feel like Lily Munster since I started developing a distinctive white streak that, like pachysandra takes over your garden, has taken over most of my head.

Men, they say, begin feeling old around the age of 58--quiet a discrepancy between when men and women start to feel it, isn't it? Only a thirty year difference!

Women equate age with their appearance but for men, according to the study, it has to do with their sexuality or their ability to sexually perform. 

This certainly makes sense.

I lowered my voice for that but, really, there was no need.  I'm sure you all have, at some point, been sitting in a diner, checking that there's enough bacon in your tuna club, when the TV mounted in the corner starts to rant about how you should "consult your doctor to see if you're healthy enough for sexual activity..."  The camera then cuts to a couple who have become confused enough to drag two bathtubs out to a hill top in which they sit in what must be ice cold, farty water, holding hands. 

How did they fill these tubs? I don't see any plumbing. Did they stumble from their home with buckets? Is it rain water?

The rest of us in the diner, those not in tubs on hill tops but who dared venture out with small children in the hope of avoiding another viagra ad on the family TV, continue eating as we patiently wait for the commercial to end so why I'm lowering my voice, I'll never know. Your five year old can probably rattle off the potential side-effects of the drugs advertised and when to go to the hospital if they persist.

The study goes on to mention that a full 22% of men said that the feeling of older age hit when they found the music in bars to be too loud. Really, boys, that makes you feel old?

Bars were too loud for me the evening I followed my "bad girl" friend, Dorothy into my first bar (shout out for Hobnails on Third Avenue in Brooklyn) and the strains of Summer Breeze by Seals and Croft made my ears bleed. So, going gray at 27, no tolerance for loud music....I better just pack it in.

Which brings me to the fact that a funeral company sponsored this study. This strikes me as a very weird conflict of interests since they are obviously trawling for customers.They should check those outdoor bath tubs, I bet they find some bodies in those.

I don't actually feel old...at least not psychologically. It is only when I pass a plate glass window in the mall and see a short fluffy-haired troll with a startled expression staring back at me that I remember I am no longer the girl I once was. It is then that I will bypass Sephora and shuffle off directly to Comfort Shoes.

But inside my fluffy troll head, I am 18 and John Travolta is still sleek, Tom Cruise still appears to be sane and Kirstie Alley is the perfect weight.

If you notice, all my references involve scientologists. I have absolutely no idea why.

The study goes on to say that another factor for how women feel is based on when they no longer feel trendy or fashionable. I would have assumed, based on recent experience, that it had something to do with our ability to efficiently digest 30 "thermo-nuclear" chicken wings with extra bleu cheese but, apparently, they have other ideas.

Having never felt trendy in my life (other than once, for a few minutes, in college after I impulse-bought a pair of Geoffrey Beene boots), I am exempt from this due to lack of a frame of reference, thank God. I knew a non-existent fashion sense would come in handy at some point.

Lily Munster and I obviously have more in common that I originally thought. She wasn't exactly a fashionista herself...although Herman didn't seem to mind. I did always wonder exactly why Marilyn, the pretty niece, was living there, didn't you? You don't think...No, Herman would never.

Studies like this make me feel old. Without constant reminders from an age-obsesssed society like ours, we'd all be feeling a lot better, I suspect. Or be scientologists. 



Maybe Marilyn Munster was a scientologist.