Activiaism

Recently when I went to an eye doctor for floaters, a common vision problem for older people, an assistant asked me if I had ever thought of cosmetic surgery for my droopy lids.

In a Kiehl's store I bought some hand cream and the cashier, in his white faux-doctor jacket, tossed too many packets of "youth regenerating skin cream with Rare 'Resurrection Flower'" into my bag.

At a cocktail party reception before a fund-raising dinner I was emceeing, a gorgeous woman came up to me, told me she was an aesthetician and that she could get rid of "those things" on my face.

I like getting senior discounted movie tickets, but I like to ask for them.

After a matinee of Robert Redford's film, The Company You Keep, about older radical revolutionaries, I was in a bathroom stall, listening to the usually astute film critiques of the Upper West Side set. "That Redford, he's been in the sun too much." "And Julie Christie? Was that a wattle?"

For sure there is such a thing as gravity. And it's true that I spent a number of summers in my youth slathering on baby oil and floating around in aluminum canoes on upstate lakes. I did not know floaters are so common, or someone told me but I forgot.

My Mom used to say, "My face I don't mind it, because I'm behind it." I think I look like Jamie Lee Curtis. I apply a dab of Activia every morning and evening to my face and neck.