Wrinkles In Time

I could have been standing barefoot on center ice, instead of bathroom tiles. 5 am. Dark. No coffee yet.

I reached for my toothbrush and the grabbed the tube that lay beside it. I twisted the cap off and performed a left-handed squeeze.

Phlephf. A half-assed fart, not the juicy splurt that escapes from a toothpaste tube.

I switched on the overhead light. I had grabbed the Retinol wrinkle cream instead of toothpaste.

I had squeezed the anti-age stuff onto my toothbrush and was about to remove the wrinkles from my teeth ­– the only parts of my body that don’t have wrinkles. Yet.

Thirty years ago I overheard a tiny old soul lament that her ‘wrinkles had wrinkles’. I laughed. I stopped laughing last September. I now have families of wrinkles, lurking in formation on my forehead; it’s as if I sleep face-down on a manhole cover. [It would be nice if my wrinkles would reside further south – on my OTHER cheeks. Never mind. It will take me a while to get that image out of my visual cortex.

Welcome Internet

I don’t know what I would have done has this happened before the Internet. Now, all I had to do was type “How to Reduce Wrinkles” into the Google search line. I found eight hints:

1. Sleep on your back. Good luck, if you snore or drool. How can I stay on my back all night? The deep crease on the left side of my face could be from years of left-leaning sleep. I cannot turn to the right. That would run against my populist grain.
2. Sleep with salmon. I mean, eat more salmon.
3. Avoid squids; no, squinting. Use reading glasses to put the kibosh on crow’s feet.’ Ditto sunglasses in the sun.
4. “Slather on alpha-hydroxy acids (AHAs).” What’s another jar of product in my war paint chest? Maybe it could double as nail polish remover.
5. Trade coffee for cocoa. Wait! These are two of my best friends. I would NEVER tell one friend I was only going to hang out with the other.
6. Don’t ever wash your face. Whew. Something I’ve done right all my life. Now, if I just knew how to get the mascara off my pillowcase.
7. Eat soy for six months. It’s got to be organic, as most soy is loaded with GMO and its touch would attract cancer to my face.
8. Topical Vitamin C. Wow. My excitement waxed and waned like my age spots. I could see myself, immersed in lemons, oranges and grapefruit. That would be what I could afford. Of course, the most potent solution is an emulsion that can be had for $10 a drop – L-ascorbic acid.

Wait!

I could slather toothpaste on my cheeks. After all, I’d stuffed toothpaste into the tiny picture holes the night before I vacated my first San Francisco studio. I got my deposit back.

Better yet, toothpaste has been known to remove years of road muck from a car’s fog lights. Years? I’ll take 20.