HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED ABOUT YOUR FACE

Have you ever wondered about your face?  You know the one that groggily looks back at you every morning in the mirror.  The one you might catch a glimpse of half a dozen or more times during the day.  It’s the same face you’ve been seeing since about the time you can first remember.  Yes there’s been a few changes along the way as years have slipped by but it’s still mostly the same face you remember every day right??  You see it constantly so in your own mind so nothing really ever seems to change much.  Well there is a real good way to see for yourself just how much your face has changed without you really noticing it.  And here’s all you have to do to see those changes & it has absolutely nothing to do with you looking at your own face.

Sit down at your computer & switch on your brain’s memory banks as best you can.  Think back, way back to your school years, people you have worked with & friends you have met along the way all those many years ago.  Think of your home town & people you knew there & grew up with.  Now you might want to write down the names of people you remember before you forget them again then type them into your Google search engine one at a time.  Some people you will find & some you won’t.  I recently spent some time on websites I found that had to do my old home town in Southwestern Ontario, Tavistock.  I was able to find a few friends who are still a part of the town & with a check of Tavistock’s local newspaper, the Tavistock Gazette I was able to see some photos of people I know who are on various committees etc.  Now most of these folks I have not seen in maybe 30, 40, 50 or more years.  I have also looked up people from the past through Facebook & there are generally recent pictures of those people posted as well.  Google searches also returned some familiar faces…….wait a minute!!  Did I say ‘familiar faces!!’

Time after time seeing recent photos of people I once knew I am often left staring in puzzlement.  Most of these people are unrecognizable to me & if not for captioned photos identifying who these people are I would not have known had I met them on the street.  If the caption said I was looking at a picture of Joe Blow I would immediately think, no that’s not Joe that’s his Dad Bill.  No it was Joe alright but what happened.  Well here’s the glaring truth for all of us.  It’s called aging & we maybe don’t readily recognize it in our own faces but we are quick to see it in the faces of people we have not seen for a long time.  It’s an instant shock to our memory banks.  In our minds we always carry an image of someone as they looked the last time we saw them.  Looking at someone’s recent photo for the first after so many years sometimes just doesn’t register & can send memory banks into overdrive trying to make something believable out of something unbelievable.  In a nutshell this is how I know my own face has changed so much.

If all the young people I once knew now look like old people then I have to look like an old people too because I was once like them & they like me.  I look in the mirror now & think to myself how would I feel if I hadn’t looked at my face for the past 50 years & all of a sudden looked myself up on the internet to see a recent picture of me.  Would I know who I am??  Would I be looking at an unrecognizable face.  Would I think it was the face of my Father.  How would I even know it was me.  Acceptance can sometimes be a hard pill to swallow & in trying to be my usual logical self it does indeed end in a hard swallowed pill alright.  If 10 of my long ago friends are now basically unrecognizable to me then for sure i have to be unrecognizable to them if & when they see a recent photo of me.  So with that thought in mind I’m now going to settle my nerves & go have a quick look in the mirror just to reassure myself who I see there is still recognizable to me.   And the more I look at that face looking back at me the better chance I have of not reaching a point where I look so unrecognizably old to myself.  Now lest I confuse me further I had better hurry up & get me on back for a peek at myself in that mirror again…………Hurry, hurry, hurry:))

GROANER’S CORNER:(( Grandma and Grandpa were sitting in their porch rockers watching the beautiful sunset and reminiscing about "the good old days". Grandma turned to Grandpa and said, "Honey, do you remember when we first started dating and you used to just casually reach over and take my hand?"  Grandpa looked over at her, smiled and obligingly took her aged hand in his. With a wry little smile, Grandma pressed a little farther, "Honey, do you remember how after we were engaged, you'd sometimes lean over and suddenly kiss me on the cheek?"  Grandpa leaned slowly toward Grandma and gave her a lingering kiss on her wrinkled cheek. Growing bolder still, Grandma said, "Honey, do you remember how, after we were first married, you'd kind of nibble on my ear?" Grandpa slowly got up from his rocker and headed into the house. Alarmed, Grandma said, "Honey, where are you going?"
Grandpa replied, "To get my teeth!"