They're Not Wrinkles...You're Just Hallucinating

There comes a time in every middle-aged woman's life when she has to surrender her loyalty for "going natural" to the makers of Crack-Fill-For-Your-Face and other such wonders. Having been offered the chance to ring in the New Year surrounded by intoxicated people in a dance hall in lieu of peeling cheese nachos off the sofa after the kids fell asleep seemed like one of those "good idea at the time" kind of deals.

The first order of business was a new dress. Not just any new dress....one that had to make my husband weak in the knees (and not from the price tag), and bring the room to total silence when I crossed the dance floor, and make the band immediately stop what they're playing and break into "You Look Wonderful Tonight". *sigh*...

Flying to the mall to begin this magical adventure armed to the teeth with my husband's credit cards, I find myself in a clothing store heavily populated and staffed by young women who look like the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders' evil twins. Ignoring the "What the hell are you doing in here?" looks dripping from the faces of the masses, I grab an armload of fabric from the counter and defiantly march to the dressing room.

Not having had the opportunity to try on new clothes that didn't have holes for breastfeeding in them for quite some time, I'm a little surprised at the firm hug the fabric is giving me once I squeeze into it. Ignoring the snickers from the staff on the other side of the curtain, I suck my gut in 'till my spine cracks and saunter out to gaze at my newest frock in the full length mirror.

Congratulating myself for maintaining my figure after three kids and 20-odd years of reality TV and Doritos, I pretend I'm deaf when the salesclerk announces "That's the drycleaning bag for our Big and Tall Menswear section".

Enjoying the sounds of the cheerleaders coughing on the vapor trail I left running out of the store, I head to the nearest outlet that sells clothes from the line of whatever used-to-be-skinny celebrity who's cashing in on every housewife's cross to bear.

Now that I've found suitable couture that doesn't involve a hunting shirt, I decide that maybe updating my look wouldn't hurt. Surely there's someone in this mall that can undo this mullet-married-to-a-beehive hairdo that I've been sporting in order to use up all those hairspray samples that keep coming in the mail.

Sliding into the beautician's chair at our local Cut and Curl, I fail to see the humor in the hairdressers doing "Rock, Paper, Scissors" right in front of me to see who has to earn their paycheck today. With a sickening sweet smile, this bimbo with a name tag reading "Feather" (can't possibly be her real name), directs me to "the back room"....both for privacy and so that no one else in the mall sees me sitting there in a drycleaning bag.

Dipping my head into a vat of water that's one degree shy of lava in order to melt the hairspray, "Feather" tells me that she needs to "take a few stray hairs" from my eyebrows..and upper lip..and chin. Pouring hot wax in copious amounts on my tender skin, I am sorely unprepared for the first four layers of my head being ripped off while "Feather" calls me Hagrid under her breath. Although horrified to see the wooly mammoth that used to be my right eyebrow stuck to the little strip of cloth on the counter, I cooly excuse myself from the back room. OK...maybe it was more like "Touch me again and I'll pluck you"...but I manage to gingerly feel my way out of the door as my right eye swells shut.

Perched on a stool in front of a mirror with enough lights on it to signal the mother ship, I let "Feather"s assistant assess what's left of the skin on my face and start erasing the years. Pressed for time, I ask her to please stop whimpering, and reassure her she can go ahead and quit right after we're done.

Spinning me around to face a mirror that magnifies my face until it looks like a Google Earth close up of Death Valley, I hear her ask "Feather" to "Find some drywall compound while I distract her with shiny objects". Mesmerized by the paper clips and keys, I hardly notice as she pastes my face with the cosmetic equivalent of Spackle.

Snapped out of my reverie by the wail of the fire alarm, I'm knocked to the floor by the wind shear left by "Feather" and her friend as they abandon ship. Staggering to the hallway, I realize I can't ask for directions to the nearest exit as my face has turned into a concrete block as it dried.

I'm only vaguely aware of the horrified stares from the other shoppers as I stumble to the parking lot with my face cemented into a one-eyed, (and one-eye browed) grimace, with my wet, sticky hair plastered to my face, and "Big and Tall...We Fit Them All" plastered across my ass...and search in vain for car keys in an empty drycleaning bag.

Lurching to a group of teenagers who are eyeing me like all those warnings about marijuana have finally come true, I ask to use a cell phone in a voice that sounds like a muffled scream because my lips are encased in asphalt. Snatching a phone from the hands of one of the teens taking pictures that will surely make me an internet sensation by dinnertime, I dial the number for Roadside Assitance and make muffled screaming noises at the man on the other end of the line until he hangs up on me.

Whirled around by a big police officer who watched me "acquire" a phone, I squawk muffled protests and feel both relieved and alarmed as he gets a good look at me and takes a few steps backwards. Cuffed and in the back of the police cruiser, I'm grieving the loss of what would have been my shining moment on the dance floor...and dreading explaining this one to the hubby.

As the police officer speaks right into my face in a very loud and deliberately slow manner to explain the fingerprinting process, I make a mental note to get in on the bets I'm hearing that my mugshot will make YouTube history. Handing me a phone, he dials the number for a government issed lawyer and gives it to me.

Making muffled noises into the mouthpiece until the lawyer growls about the cops prank calling him again, I hang my head as the "on hold" music begins......"You look wonderful tonight....."

The Mammogram

Turning 40 is not without its pratfalls. Couple the constant vigil to slather every inch of my skin with SPF 250 to prevent being cast as a "Warrior Extra" in "The Mummy Returns" with the horrible realization that cheesecake is fleeting...but cellulite lives forever, and it becomes obvious how ill-prepared I was to enter my twilight years.

With the new quadruple assault on the decades behind me, I was also hit with the realization that my body could just up and quit at any time. And has threatened to during many exercise regimes. So, enter the "Preventative Health Phase".

Yes, I know that regular check ups are important....and doing the yearly "woman things" at the doctor's office is a fact of life.....but is it really necessary to try and mimic childbirth from the waist up to remind us that we're too old now for anyone to care what our girls look like?

Not knowing what to expect, I piled myself into the car...sans deodorant as per the info sheet my doctor gave me....and prepared to look some x-ray technician in the eye and pretend he/she wasn't man-handling my boobs.

Arriving at the hospital, I instantly knew where the mammogram department was by watching the hordes of women running for the parking lot clutching their chests and begging for ice packs. Not one to be easily intimidated, I looked the receptionist square in the eye and said, "I'm Colleen Hawley and I'm here for an x-ray of my foot".

Cursing the hospital policy that gives the receptionist access to what the doctor ordered, I sulk around back and wait for my turn in the masher. Ignoring the yelping of the woman ahead of me, I convince myself that they couldn't possibly be filming a slasher movie in there and bravely take my johnny shirt and psych myself up for game day.

Entering the room to meet the technician who will be my tour guide to old-womanhood, I stop and swoon at what I'm seeing. Imagine if Brad Pitt and George Clooney were blended in to one man...with the physique of Mr. Universe.....and the hair of a Greek God....and you have the perfect man to help someone as shy as me get through this rite of passage. I feel like I'm in a dream state as he gently puts his hand under my chin, expecting him to remark something like "My God, you're magnificent!".....only to have him push my mouth closed and mutter "You're drooling on my lab coat".

Painfully aware of how many children I breastfed...and how many times I went bra-less doing housework...I curse the cruelty of the earth's gravitational field and follow Mr. Perfect to his contraption. Passing me two metal BB pellets, he instructs me to tape them to my nipples while he warms up the machine that will know me in ways only my husband did after our fourth date.

Giggling as I coyly give him the "This is not a date" joke, I'm instantly shut up as he shoves me chest-first into a plastic vice that was surely invented by some one-eyed sociopath who locked himself in a laboratory with a three-headed assistant for a hundred years. Gauging the severity of my whiplash injury, I'm hardly aware that Mr. Perfect has grabbed one of my girls and laid it on an ice cold slab of some material that must have been pirated from Area 57.

Giving me his generic "This won't hurt" spiel as he dives for cover behind a lead wall, I notice that something is happening....the walls are closing in! Escape is futile as those metal BB pellets seem to be attracted to the magnets in the MRI lab next door, and I'm cemented to the masher. Still trying to maintain some composure and appear like a voluptuous-if-not-aging dignitary, I break out in a sweat that would shame a lava flow as my boob is compressed into a diamond...but I do not cry out...I do not show fear....I do not BELIEVE that I wasn't allowed to wear deodorant!

Hearing Mr. Perfect rounding the corner again, I try to fan and dry my upper body with my good arm and put on a "That didn't hurt a bit, you silly" kind of face. Watching Mr. Perfect grimace and smear menthol under his nose, I switch instead to Plan B...beg for morphine or a nerve block.

The relief I felt as the masher surrendered its death grip on me was instantly replaced with the awful realization that God gave me two boobs. Sensing my intent to bolt for the parking lot and beg for an ice-pack, Mr. Perfect whipped out a magnet and cemented me to the masher again. Bracing for the pending alteration in my cellular carbon, I pray that Mr. Perfect reaches the age where he'll need a prostate exam real soon.

Not caring anymore that I smell like a dead goat's ass, or that my hair resembles Phyllis Diller in her drinking days, I use the scoop provided by Mr. Perfect to scrape my boobs off the masher and rearrange them into a bra that will never fit right again.

Giving me his most professional "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?" smile, I ask for my clothes with a voice usually reserved for frightening ghosts away and actually enjoy his startled expression as he realizes I'm calculating my odds with a jury of my peers.

Throwing my clothes back on, I ignore his "But Mrs. Hawley"s and storm out of the room and head for the parking lot to stick my chest into a snowbank. Marching by the MRI lab, I instantly regret not waiting for his final instructions as the machine whirs to life and drags me to the door by the BB pellets that I neglected to remove before storming out.

Ripping the tape that was surely originally marketed to keep the space arm attached to the latest Nassau shuttle, I am pleasantly surprised by the amount of Gaelic curse words I remember from my high school days. Throwing Mr. Perfect one more "Get a Colonoscopy" look, I abandon my quest to find one last shred of dignity as I stagger to the parking lot.

Can't wait to turn 50........