The Writing On The Wall

Today I was combing my hair when suddenly my heart turned turtle, and the comb slipped from my hands.  This is it’, I thought in panic, ‘the end of my world.This is Nemesis.  There won’t be any more fun to be had out of life”.Guess what happened?  I had found my first white hair.  No, not grey not auburn or golden, or even pepper and salt.  But white, plain, stark, staring white.   I tugged at it, like I would tug at a weed in a garden.  It came away.  But lying in my hand it seemed to mock at me. 

I could see the writing on the wall and knew without a shadow of doubt, that this wasn’t the end.  This was only the beginning.  Like the Biblical cloud no9 bigger than a man’s hand that had grown into a swarm of locusts, that one white strand presaged the shape of things to come.
I had plucked out one white hair.  But that didn’t mean victory would be mine.  No I knew it would be a losing battle, inexorably, inevitably, others would follow.. The trend had been set.  My knees gave way.  I sat down with a sigh.  That night I dreamt that all my hair was whiter than white, and my family shut the door in my face.  They took me to be a stranger.  Even my dog barked, and tried to bite me. 
Come to think of it, have you noticed, the whole world is out to get your age.  It is on your driving license, your insurance policy, your ration card.  Apply for a job, they want your age, enter a contest, state your age. Seek admission somewhere, give your age.
When one is young, and birthdays are fun, one does not draw any lines about proclaiming, one’s age.  But when youth is a memory, and birthdays are nightmares, it isn’t quite as nice celebrating birthdays or telling the world at large how old one is.There are some true sayings that are so much poppycock.  Take that one! Life begins at forty, or, you are not as old as you are, but as young as you feel.  Life beginning at forty?  Bunkum, tommy-rot, sheer baloney.  Age does not wither etc, may have been alright for Cleopatra, maybe it is all right for Liz Taylor and Jackie Kennedy, but not for the lay woman.
Some wise guy quipped that forty may be the old age of youth but it is the youth of old age.  Like hell it is.  He must have been talking through his hat.  Why, even at thirty, you are getting old, done for, finished.  By the time you are forty, the lid is on tight and secure on the days of your youth and your glory.  The world is no more your oyster.
Am I blowing my top?  It is high time I did.  For there are double standards in the matter of age between man and woman.  The former is young at fifty, even at sixty, maybe even at seventy.  Even at eighty he may yet wink at a girl, and get away with it.  But let a forty, nay a thirty-year old woman wink at a man, they will think she is off her rocker.  Any wonder then that a woman will lie like a trooper and jump through loops to cover her age.
Anyway, one thing I know, I am going to wink at them all, right, left and centre, before all my hair turns grey.  There may not be any takers, but what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander too.  If a sucker in his dotage can wink at a girl in her teens, what is to prevent me from winking at them , whether they be young enough to be my sons, and like it or not.  At least, it is one way of getting even with the blighters who think there are no rules to the game when the innings is theirs.  That in their camp, youth is elastic.  But in ours, a woman past her prime is something for the scrap heap.