Our Country's Obsession with YOUTH

What is wrong with looking and acting like a 40 year old? When you ARE 40?

I always thought that I would have trouble with the age 50. But I really thought that the trouble would be a vague melancholy on my birthday, followed by no real change in my daily outlook.

But increasingly over the last few years I've become more and more...cranky?... about my age. And I'm only 43. But I feel really old.

It doesn't help that my kids have hit their teen years. They see me as semi-embarassing. I remember seeing my mother in this same light, and now that I think back on it, she was way younger than I was! But I take comfort in the fact that even if I was younger and really "hot" I would still be embarassing. And I think that is probably the way it's supposed to be.

My hair is thinning, gray, and ... old. I'm getting wrinkles and all kinds of age spots. I can't wear some of the clothes that younger people wear; I feel foolish in them. Like I'm trying to be someone who I'm not.

I'm trying to embrace the new me -- the matron. The old woman. I want to be happy being who I am and I don't want to try and be something I'm not.

So the reason this topic comes up, especially, is because there was a local teacher that got into SERIOUS trouble for text messaging one of her students, in a sexual manner. I knew the teacher, although I was never friendly with her. She taught in a middle school, and the student was someone she had in middle school and is a high school student now. The teacher has to be about my age -- early 40's.

Now, she's in jail waiting to go to trial.

What could she have been thinking? She is an ADULT, for goodness sake! What kind of a relationship could she possibly have wanted with a TEENAGER??? And WHY?

And I have to have seen at least 3 cases of these female teachers being arrested in the last few weeks.

So I go back to our country's obsession with youth. Why can't we all just grow up? Accept the wrinkles and the bad hair and the hot flashes and the age spots! We can't stay teenagers forever. It's time to move on to adulthood.

And I figure that the more people that age gracefully, the easier it will be to do for ALL of us. So come on, people, no more botox or liposuction or face lifts. Enough is enough.