Bad Body Parts

Let's be truthful. Getting old is a humbling experience. 

I am not "old" by today's standards, but in, like, 1880 I would have been a miracle - probably the "ancient one" in some tribe, (were there tribes in Ireland? And did they have ancient people in them? If so, I most likely would have been named "Chief Potato Picker" because of my incredible age.) Okay, well, with age, they say, comes wisdom. Yes, it does - that's for sure. And, actually, you don't have to be that old to have gained a little wisdom through life experience. For example, when I was nine, I didn't know that drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels with your other stupid high school freshman girlfriend would make you so ill the next day that you would wish you were dead.  I was lucky enough to figure that out by age fourteen. Okay, that's just one example. There are certainly other kinds of wisdom that you gain with age. Like knowing that the saying "Love never means having to say you are sorry" is complete bullsh*t. I say sorry every day and I love lots of people! 

Here's the kind of wisdom I'm talking about. Body parts wisdom. I'm not talking about the "If you masturbate, son, you will go blind" kind of wisdom.

I'm talking about the kind of wisdom where you actually know that the kind of life you are living and the risks you take with your body will eventually severely effect your body parts.

When I was young, my grandmother told me two very wise things: "Mo, don't bite your nails, it looks like hell and it will dull your teeth", and "Don't crack your knuckles, or you'll have arthritis later in life."  She offered to pay me $25.00 to stop biting my fingernails. I bit at that offer; I grew them long enough to earn the twenty five bucks so I could buy that stupid bottle of Jack Daniels that almost killed me! But, she was right. I cracked and cracked and cracked my knuckles (it sounded so cool), and now I have huge knuckles. I have ugly hands and ugly toes anyway. My beloved Aunt Karen always called my fingers "sausage fingers" - and she really does not exaggerate.  I have stubby, short, HUGE ARTHRITIC KNUCKLED fingers. Damn, I should have listened to my Grandmother. If I had, maybe I'd be a famous hand model now.

Another kind of body part wisdom I have now come to understand: Don't get fat. When you gain and lose weight, not only do you spend a large amount of money on different sized clothing, but your poor knees hurt like hell when you are finally in good enough shape to actually exercise or use them for the purpose they were intended: holding up the rest of your fat-assed body.  I often walk up the stairs and hear "crunch" in my right knee and think, "Oh, God, when is that sucker gonna go out?"  Those kinds of things make you really slow down and say, "Jeez, wish I hadn't gained 60 pounds in 1992." Also, when you lose that weight, you have to deal with excess "chin fat." I call that "turkey neck-syndrome." Now that's humbling. 

Another bad body part kind of thing from that part of the body is this: chin hairs. Yup, it happens to EVERYONE. It does. I remember my lovely, virgin chin. Ahhhhhh. One day, I felt a sort of bump below my chin - sort of "under" it. I figured it was a zit. Being a zit squeezer from way back, I tried to get that thing to squirt out the offending pimple guts, but to no avail. Instead, within a week - you guessed it - a HAIR! It wasn't a zit, it was a FOLLICLE.  That is really something I had to get over, and I haven't yet. And it NEVER goes away. I just check it every now and then, and if there's even the hint of a hair, I pull it out.  Some people are really given some heavy burdens in life to bear...

Then, there is the "eyeball" wisdom. I've worn glasses since I was in fourth grade. Contacts since I was 16. Now I'm 44 and I wear bi-focal glasses, have regular contact lenses but need reading glasses with my contacts to read up close. I remember making fun of everyone I could remember in my youth that I knew who used to hold up something to read then stretch their arm out two feet and squint so they could actually see what they were reading. Or the famous "taking-off-your-glasses-and-putting-them-on-your-head-because-you-can-see-up-close-much-better-without-them." Funny for me at 16, a reality for me at forty-four.

I have had lots of surgeries. Some elective, some necessary. One necessary one - surgery for Temporal Mandibular Joint disorder. (My mouth locked OPEN - for those of you that know me, of course it was OPEN, because you know it's NEVER closed.) Anyway, the doctors made an incision in front of my left ear (much like a face-lift scar), and they put that jaw joint back in place and sewed it there. Little did I know (or did ANYONE EVER TELL ME) that I'd be numb there FOREVER, be prone to more ear problems and headaches. Shoot, for all that trouble, and considering how much I talk now, I might have well just left it alone. It's open all the time now, so - dumb surgery choice!

I had endometriosis - a problem many women face that can cause infertility. To find out if you have endometriosis, you must have a "diagnostic laparascopy" - a surgery where they go into your abdomen via your belly button with a scope and look around. I had four of those over about five years, so they had to go in surgically at my belly button four times for that. They didn't want to cut into old scar tissue, so each time I had a new surgery, I had a new incision into my belly button.  Fast forward to the removal of my gallbladder and an ectopic pregnancy (fetus caught in fallopian tube), and they (doctors) go into your gut via your belly button for those procedures, too. That makes six different incisions at my belly button. Guess what my flabby, spare tire belly has in the middle of it? You guessed it - a belly button that looks like a kid's drawing of the sun!   ☀

I used to be a beach bum. I grew up in Connecticut on the shoreline. I lived at the beach, swam, rode in boats, then joined the Coast Guard and served at a Coast Guard Search and Rescue station in Florida. I rode boats and "SAVED LIVES." Meanwhile, as my lovely Irish freckled face became more be-freckled, I was adding to my chances of melanoma (no, I don't have that yet, thank God), but I do have "age spots". As a matter of fact, my "freckles" on my arms "moved" so close together, that my husband jokingly told me it looks like I have "cuffs" on my arms below my wrists, and he's right. (The "cuffs" only appear from my wrist to part way up my arm - precisely where I roll my sleeves up to).  Only now the dermatologist tells me they're not freckles anymore, but "age spots caused by sun-damaged skin". Witch! Does she know how hard I worked for those tans? Or how many people I pulled out of the water for that "healthy sun-kissed" look?  

Hair. How about hair? When I was young, it was very fine and straight like my dad's hair. Then, it turned curly and thick like my mom's hair. At sixteen, it started turning gray (family genetic curse on both sides), and at twenty-two, I was full salt-and pepper, twenty-six, pure white. Me and Miss Clairol have had a great relationship since I was twenty three. This, however, causes some problems.  I recently read in a magazine that if you dye your hair continuously for over 25 years, you might have to worry about dye-related problems - ("medium auburn brown" brain cells)? Well, I'm there. Annnnnddd, once you start dyeing your hair, how do you stop? You can be one of those really tacky people you see on the "Jerry Springer Show" who have no teeth and white roots (five inches of roots) followed by ten inches of platinum blonde. (Hair stylists call this the area where the gray meets the dye the "line of Demarcation.") Sounds elegant, right? Nope. My only hope of going back to my real roots (so to speak) and save what brain cells I have left that were not destroyed by dye or that first bottle of Jack Daniels, is to shave my head completely and start from scratch. I'm almost ready to do that and either a). start a trend, or 

b). look like a chemo  patient. I'm gonna go for trendy.

I have to stop for now about the bad body parts. I have a few more I'll save for another blog, but I'm getting depressed. The truth is, while I'm writing this, I can actually FEEL my boobs sagging a little bit more, slowly heading to rest on the spare tire shelf that is my belly. At least I can find comfort in the knowledge that when they finally reach that shelf, there'll be a little sun shining there to brighten their day; at least they won't have to worry about freckles, age spots, or melanoma from that surgically-created sun that is now my belly button.  Lucky, lucky, boobs. ☀