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I woke up to my first ever grey hair. In my eyebrow.

“Did this happen overnight?” I screamed as I ran around my house, displaying the tweezed evidence that proves it is almost illegal for me to chase after twenty-year-old boys. “Or have I been walking around in public with one lone grey hair in the MIDDLE OF MY FACE?”

My mother, who doesn’t look a day over forty-five courtesy of Chanel foundation and a truck load of delusion, shook her head and laughed.

“I thought you were working on a personality, so it didn’t matter if you aged?” she reminded me. Whoever said age brings wisdom is wrong, because even I know not to kick a soldier while she is about to put her head in an oven.

I have always had an ethical view-point against cosmetic surgery, as I believe that people should improve themselves from the inside-out. Yeah…That was before I started to resemble Santa Claus in the forehead region.

“If eyes are the windows to the soul,” I pondered, “and eyebrows are the curtains to those windows, I think it is time that I moved house. Or at least renovated.”

 

I am excited to be old. The actual process of getting to that stage doesn’t so much impress me, but the image of sitting in a rocking chair on my porch, holding a scotch and a shotgun, surrounded by cats while I shoot everything born past 20305 excites me to no end. I have a [somewhat] foreign hope that by, say, age eighty-years-old, life will make sense to me and the bullshit that has consumed my prior days will be as dead as my sex-drive. 

It is a shame that I won’t have the stamina, or dress code, to do anything with the acquired wisdom. But I anticipate that it won’t matter, as knowing the answer on the inside will be much more rewarding than parading around town in knee-high-boots, or whatever it is us kids do to distract ourselves from the real issues of life.

 

If I were to discover a Genie, and be granted three wishes, [I would dedicate the first two to Zac Efron] and then request that The Jetson’s was a true depiction of The Future. If only so my aforementioned cats could actually be robots and therefore not need food or require actual attention. I want to fly around in a bubble car. I want to play Space Ball. And I smoke because I have tremendous faith that the medical community will evolve faster than my personality is able to. The idea that all of this is ahead of me is far more exciting than being wrinkle free. Yeah…That was before I started to resemble Santa Claus in the forehead region.

 

The initial shock that, taa-daa, you won’t be young forever is similar to the day you realize that there are people who hate you.

“What? Me?” Is a typical response. “No. You must have the wrong person.”

Then you get a definite sign – such as a for instance or a grey hair in the MIDDLE OF YOUR FACE – and you have to concede that you are not invincible and, maybe, an asshole.

“Ok, so I kicked her cat. I would probably hate me to.”

When I realized that I won’t always have youth on my side, and it will, in fact, one day hate me, I started to hyperventilate over all of the things I Have To Do. And then Who I Have Left To Do dawned on me and I needed to take a nap to recover from the overwhelming sense of hard work ahead of me.

 

RG’s mother, dubbed Nanna Kiwi because of her location of birth, is staying in my house to celebrate her seventieth birthday. It means that there is someone in my vicinity who at least appears to be older than I, but also, there is wisdom at my disposal that can only come from having lived over twenty-five thousand days.

“I gave up having dreams and aspirations long ago,” she announced when RG questioned why she still resides in a country that has more sheep than humans or political philosophies.

Nanna Kiwi married a man twenty-five years old than her when she was still in her teens, which, essentially means that, other than grey hair, we have absolutely nothing in common.

I started wondering at what age one starts to loose the desire to dream? Is it when there you have nothing but grey hairs? Or is it way before that, around the time that You realize that Genies aren’t real and all goals will have to be achieved with absolutely nothing but tenacity?

“If this is what comes with the wisdom of age,” I pondered. “Maybe I don’t want to get old after all.”

The naivety of being young is significantly more awe-inspiring than tight skin or blonde hair. The ignorance to what life is actually like means that there is endless hope that anything can happen. If strong enough, the desire materializes into achieved dreams. If not, sitting on a rocking chair and pulling the trigger is probably as good as it is going to get.

 

A house filled with old people is quite depressing, as there are few people to get excited over the superficial like a group of young people will. Not wanting to be included in That group, I put on my oversized aviator sunglasses which conveniently cover the majority of my face, including my eyebrows, and walked to the place of employment of my new twenty-year-old crush.

 

After an [intense?] conversation about the merits of fleece tracksuit pants, which made me feel as young as twenty-three again, I decided that I can totally support cosmetic surgery on the inside: a desperate quest to remain mentally young while the body which houses your intellect and curiosity falls apart or turns grey.