When I was little, I said famously that I wanted to die in some tragic accident when I was old enough to have done everything, but young enough not to have wrinkles. Ironically enough, Princess Diana was killed in Paris a couple of weeks later, just like that.
I was embroiled in an discussion with Fawkes today about how we saw ourselves when we are old. He imagined being a fat, bald old man in a comfortable chair, his favourite dog at his feet, his grandchildren all around, and his wife cooking him something in the kitchen. In his vision, he was about 75. My imaginary “me as an old woman” was a sprightly thing, just as crazy and terminally creative and lively as now, dressed in a head scarf and pedal pushers, running around in developing countries helping out with health care, education and advocacy for disadvantaged groups. I was in my late 80s.
The reason why, as a child, I never wanted to get ‘old’ was directly tied to the idea of having to slow down. The concept conjured up visions of getting physically slower, muscle turning to fat and then spreading, illness, becoming hunchbacked and ‘hobbly’, having to wear a different type of clothes, be afraid of anything new and eventually becoming a relic of a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
Now that I am old enough to know better, these changes are being proved to be more about an attitude change – society tells us that these things happen when we are ‘old’, but lots of them, we let happen. Fawkes put it perfectly when he said this; “Old people don’t need to eat healthily or keep fit, because they don’t care about how they look anymore”. When are people going to understand that ‘looking good’ is only a happy side effect of a healthy lifestyle, rather than the reason we should do it? To me, the reason people look and feel old is not because they are old – they bring ‘oldness’ and everything that entails upon themselves by giving up on themselves.
Rant: over! There were more bits and pieces of frustration on this topic roaming around my head, but now that I got all that out, I’m calming down. I want to live my whole life, not just the 18-50 year old part.
Other than arguing, I simply had to try out another of Clotilde’s gorgeous recipes: Banana Pecan Muffins. I made them in a Texas muffin tin, so I only got six, but they were each about as big as a baby’s head. I had a hard time trying to cream butter with a wooden spoon – I think my right bicep has probably doubled in size from my efforts. But ultimately it was fun, and the muffins were brilliant. It was sad though – my Dad is out for dinner with his girlfriend (ewww), Fawkes is at work, so I am home alone with nobody to share them with. I called Lucien and told him that he simply must drive for an hour, just to taste my muffins, but he refused. Silly practical boy and his inability to give into impulsive whims…
I read an anecdote written by the beautiful Olympia Manet once, about a time where she had to interview two men for a position. Both had been out of work before the interview, but while one had maxed out his credit cards, the other had been able to put aside his pride enough to get a temporary job at Banana Republic. It’s obvious who she ended up hiring.
Similar things are happening for me right now. While I send out half a million applications every day for everything from copywriter to ice cream scooper to junior legal secretary to bridal registry consultant, I managed to get an interview for next week. For McDonalds.
I suppose I should share my hospitality industry horror story, which forms most of the reason why I don’t want to work with food. When I was 15 years old, I got a trial at a local café. I had been there for about 20 minutes when I managed to severely injure my face.
There was a walk-in freezer with a chain connecting the door to the frame, to keep it from swinging open too far. Not knowing my way around, I managed to walk straight through this chain, which thanked me by slicing through skin and cartilage in my nose in three places. I laughed and apologized to the woman who was supervising me; “Oh my God, I’m sorry I’m such a klutz.” Then the blood came. Pouring down my face, soaking my braids and my t-shirt, and pooling on the floor. I looked at it and felt like I was going to pass out.
I then went into shock and can’t remember most of the rest of the night, but my Mum informed me of the rest. She rushed me to the doctor to see if it could be stitched up right away, or whether I had to go to hospital. I had to wait for two people who weren’t visibly sick to see the doctor, while I bled all over the carpet, crying and shaking. The most idiotic man who ever roamed the earth leaned over to me and laughed, “Well, I guess you won’t be pretty anymore.” My Mum attests that she could have killed him then and there.
The doctor wouldn’t stitch it, so I was sent off to hospital where I waited for five hours, still bleeding all over myself and the floor. The Oscars was on television in the waiting room, and I cried the whole time watching beautiful actors getting their awards and not knowing how mangled my own face was. People with twisted ankles got attended to, a fat lady with a sore throat, a baby with the sniffles.. they had forgotten about me. I went up to the triage nurse and bled all over her desk, and finally I was seen.
I remember a lovely blonde nurse who looked and sounded like J.K. Rowling clean my face and tape my nose back together. She held my hand and told me that scars “added character” and that lots of successful actors had interesting scars. At this point, my tip of my nose was hanging and you could see directly into my nostril from looking at me straight on – I didn’t exactly consider this an ‘interesting scar’. The decision came whether to call a plastic surgeon immediately for emergency surgery (at 3am) or to wait until the next day. We agreed that nobody would do very good work at 3am, so I went home.
After lots of plastic surgery consultations (no surgery, yet, but we’ll see) and massage therapy, the scar isn’t actually that bad. Nowadays, walk in freezers make me nauseous, and hospitality settings make me panicky and anxious. So why do I think I can work at McDonalds? I don’t know, but I need money, and it seems like a very disposable job – if I can’t do it, I’ll throw it away.
