I recently had a disturbing birthday. Basically, every birthday after 23 has been disturbing, but they keep getting worse. (Visible signs of aging don’t help matters by the way.) The wreckage that was left behind after two children is insurmountable; and only mildly concealed by tanning, Spanx, and super-duper steel-enforced bras. Whoever said “Age is just a number,” didn’t have gray hair, stretch marks or my reflection in their mirror.

Anyways – the further removed I become from my youth, the more unclear I am about what it looks like. Whenever I get together with my college friends, I genuinely believe that we all look pretty good. I can see some lines and puffiness around the eyes (could be the kids, could be the wine) but I think we are actually aging gracefully. But wait! Is it because we are so accustomed to being old and weathered that we don’t even know that we look like Barbara Bush??

Sometimes if I am not too tired (or fat) -I try to relive my youth and go to a bar with my husband. One night recently we got a babysitter and went out on the town. We ended up at a bar filled with what appeared to be 12 year olds, but were obviously 21 and older. I said to my husband, “I wonder if everyone thinks we are that creepy, weird old couple at the bar.” After discussing for a few minutes – I decided to get to the bottom of it. There was a young couple kind of hovering over us at the bar, and I decided to ask them point blank, what they thought our ages were.

“Don’t feel bad – just give it to us straight,” I said trying to talk without any facial expressions that would reveal folds and creases.

The girl looked at us thoughtfully for a minute or so while her boyfriend looked on.

“I think like late-20′s” she said carefully. (The correct answer was 34.)

The boyfriend shook his head up and down in approval of this answer, and then suddenly it was like a light bulb went off.

He was about to take a sip of his beer and stopped short, smacked his girlfriend in the arm and said excitedly,

“No wait!”

He pointed to the bar where I had plopped my things down next to my drink.
“Look at her phone!”

We all looked at my flip-phone from the 1800′s.

“Oh.” the girl said with defeat.

“I was going to agree to late 20′s, but now that I see your phone…..I am bumping it up to 35. You are afraid of technology,” he said smugly and took a swig of his beer.

My husband and I sat there slack-jawed. Here I am slathering myself with eye creams and serums and jacking up my boobs so they will appear less like breastfeeding wreckage and more like actual human anatomy, and these people don’t see any of it. This young and beautiful generation sees youth in social networking tools.

From that day until my Verizon upgrade – anytime we were out – my husband would say, “Put your phone away….it’s making us look old.”

I still use SPF and eye cream but….lesson learned.
What do you think makes you look older…this phone?

or this eye??

If you said the phone ….apparently you are correct!!!

About the Author:

LADY GOO GOO GAGA is a stay-at-home mother to two boys, born 18 months apart in the suburbs of CT.  She used to spend her days in NY smoking cigarettes and thinking about which shoe she was going to buy next.  Now she wears flip-flops year-round from the Old Navy.  She has been in a sleep-deprived state of shock for the past 4 years and just started to come out of it when her older child went to kindergarten.  She has short snippets of time now when she can think clearly and form full sentences, and uses that time to blog her stories! She attempts to remain anonymous so that her friendly neighbors and bus-stop associates won’t come to her house with torches and pitchforks.