Wrinkled Old Monkeys

"Earn Your Stripes" - 3.5 x 2.5" colored pencil.
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So it is officially one week now until I head down to Myrtle Beach with the inlaws. My mother tells me helpfully: "when you're out on the beach, remember that in a month the tan will fade, but the wrinkles will stay forever."

As if I have ever sat on a beach and tanned my white hide in my life.

The truth is, I think I might be against most traditional beauty rituals. I mean, do girls and women ever look at old women and wonder vaguely how they got that way when they're slathering on their foundation and sitting out baking in the sun?

When mad scientists do their animal testing, they're only making sure the product doesn't make the animals blister or turn purple or die or something equally unpleasant. They don't put it on some high-maintenance monkey for 60 years and then test for wrinkles and blotches.

So that makes YOU the monkey, my friend! When you slap that L'oreal Too Hot For You Youthening Blemish Cream on your cheeks, ask yourself, "Do I feel lucky? Do I?"

Same for all that Bowtox, hair dye, tanning lotion, lipstick, firming powder, etc., etc. You don't see monkeys using that stuff day to day. So don't say I didn't warn you when you're 75 and bald, wrinkly, bumpy, blotchy, and saggy and bear an uncanny resemblance to a handbag.*

*an ugly handbag. the type you'd find on the clearance rack at target. no! at big lots.

Anyway, it was with completele confidence that I told Mom that I would not lie on the beach and tan the white wrapper that I happened to arrive on this planet in. Thou willst not find me an unnatural shade of bronze this summer.

Am I the only one?