Perspective!

Perspective

     What happens as we get older? To our perspective, I mean. It appears that judgement is clouded at certain times in your life. I remember in middle school wearing a hot pink A-line skirt (just below the knee). I paired it with a beige blouse with the ever-so-popular roll-up sleeves of the 60s. I wore it over and over, convinced that it was really cool. As was my Ben Casey blouse. Now I realize that someone should have taken it and burned it when I wasn't looking.

  

     As a young lady, the only hair color that I liked was to put auburn highlights in my dark brown hair. Never considered anything else. When the current palette of colors came out, I thought they were way out there. Kids sported them and then I started to see adults adding on other colors to their hair. Now, I find myself thinking that those little purple or blue streaks are kind of pretty. Not that it would work for me, I am sticking to basic gray.

     When braces came out in coordinating colors, I was taken aback. Braces should be functional, not a fashion statement. Now I find myself prodding children, "And what color are your braces?"

 But the most evident of my attitude change was toward tattoos. I have always been a tattoo avoider. I always believed that if your kids grew up without a variety of rings piercing various parts of their bodies, and without tattoos, that maybe they have safely made it to adulthood. When my youngest got a tattoo on his arm, it changed my 

perspective. Why? It was a really meaningful thing to him and it was beautiful, like artwork. Not that I really want him to go out and tat the rest of his body, but I can handle this one. 

     When I think of all the fads I lived through, it seems that what is going on today is just more of the same. Beehives, flips and pageboys, hot pants, bell bottoms, mullets and mohawks( eesh!) all played their parts in my younger days. 

    I just wish....the low sagging pants would go away. I'm over seeing the boxer shorts of every teen in town. Pull em up guys. Save our eyesight.

I don't want to be a buttinsky but why?

Perspective

It's funny how our perspectives on events differ so greatly from person to person. George, my husband, and I can both recount an event to someone and I find out that I am not sure we were at the same place. Today I was feeling some rather heavy stress over some personal issues bothering me and in one phone call my self-concern was wiped away. I received a call from a Stroke Survivors Support Group who would like me to come and speak to them about humor in life. The magnitude of this commitment amazed me as I talked to the woman who called, a stroke victim herself, who laughingly told me that I will have no trouble finding her and her friends because they are all in wheelchairs.
Wow! What an honor to be able to offer laughter to people who have been there and more. It could not have come at a better time. I just got my first bad review for my new book Wrinkles, Waistlines and Wet Pants. All my other reviews have been excellent but this one hurt. A younger woman, she chastised me for finding age-related body issues and health something to laugh about. She felt that our older readers deserved better. Hmm. Wait till she hits 60!