All opinions are always 100% honest and my own. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I also participate in: CJ Affiliate; eBay Partner Network; Rakuten Affiliate Network; ShareASale; Walmart Affiliate Program; independent affiliate networks.
I'm feeling really old right now. I just helped my 12-year-old son with his homework. He had an entire page of math problems where he was asked to figure the area of circles. Yup, you've got it ?r^2.
I saw that and thought, “You've got be kidding me! It was only nine years ago that he was still potty-training and now he's already learning about pi?” Yeah, that's pi, not pee.
So maybe that is how this works? They pee in their diapers, and do pi once their out? Because that's exactly how it feels!
How did this happen so fast? How did we go from patty-cake to pi? He's only in 6th grade! Did I do pi in 6th grade? Maybe I did. Maybe I'm just too old to remember. (I've had four children, and I'm thoroughly convinced that pushing during delivery does more than bring forth new life. I think it kills brain cells. I've noticed a direct relation between each delivery and my decreasing ability to recall. So maybe I did do pi in 6th grade.)
But wasn't I more grown up than he is? I must have been. I remember 6th grade, and I was so much more mature than he is…wasn't I?
I guess I have to accept the fact that I'm now at the point that I thought was “old” when I was twelve.
The truth is, I did have to start dyeing my hair last year. For the three or four years previous to that I was just plucking out the grays. I'd see one starting to meander it's way through the black on top of my head, so I'd grab the tweezers and yank that bugger right out. Then early last year I realized it was taking me a good 40 minutes in front of the mirror, once every two weeks or so, to get all of those obnoxiously wiry, white hairs off my head. I finally admitted that it was time for Clairol and I to become acquainted lest I make myself bald.
And hey, speaking of hair, what's the deal with the ones under the chin? Hello? No one ever warned me that part of a woman's aging process included turning into a man. Someone tell me I'm not going to have to have my prostate checked. We don't miraculously end up with one of those, too, do we?
I guess I've never really felt my age. I'm turning 39 this summer. One more year to the big 4-0. But, my birthdays have never bothered me. Yeah, another year, another numerical digit higher, so what? It's just a number. I never understood why some women get so upset about turning another year older.
The thought of turning 40 doesn't bother me. It's not the number. It's the thought that I might actually feel older. I mean really, what's next? Dentures? Those inflatable donuts to sit on in the car? Ben Gay? Depends? (Well, let's be honest ladies. Those of us who have had children know that we probably could have started using Depends right after we started delivering babies. There's something about pushing an object that's roughly the size of a small watermelon through the…well, let's just say the whole process sort of messes things up and makes us run to the nearest restroom every time we laugh, cough, or sneeze.)
So, okay. The kids are growing at roughly the same rate as my back end too quick for me. But, I can handle it, right?
This is, after all, the plan hubby and I have had all along; get married, have kids, raise them to be honest, faithful, dependable, trustworthy, God-fearing, God-loving adults, release them into the world, then spend the rest of our lives enjoying the same one-on-one focus were we able to have with each other when we first got married and it was just the two of us. Of course, this time it will be with the added benefit of having grandchildren to spoil then send back home to mom and dad.
So, we're just a little further into that plan! We're making progress toward the goal! That's a good thing! The empty-nest/grandchildren part of it is still quite a way off. I'm only 38. I'm still young…enough. And youth is partly a matter of attitude, isn't it? Of course it is!
Yes, my son is doing square roots, solving for x, and using pi. And so what! Inside I can be as youthful as I ever was, and if I oh, sorry to cut this short. It's 8 o'clock. Time for my Centrum Silver.
Alison Moore Smith is a 61-year-old entrepreneur who graduated from BYU in 1987. She has been (very happily) married to Samuel M. Smith for 40 years. They are parents of six incredible children and grandparents to two astounding grandsons. She is the author of The 7 Success Habits of Homeschoolers.
I’ve been going through an aging crisis for a while, and I’m younger than you are. That may be because I feel 40 years older than I am, and also because of the whole growing-out-of-childbearing-stage pain because we haven’t been able to have any more. I feel like I just got started and now I’m almost to the point where my age will decide that I’m done? I also just realize how fast it all goes and sometimes I don’t feel ready to be old, gray and then dead. 🙂 Cuz you know it will come faster than we can imagine. But, hey, there’s still lots of living to do, and that aging thing is part of the plan, right?
Unblievebale how well-written and informative this was.
I went through a similar crises when I discovered I couldn’t sleep on the floor with just a blanket under me any more. And when my bones started to creak when I got up. And you should feel lucky – my very first baby gave me a pinky-sized streak of silver hair. No pulling that one out.
Hah! Maybe that’s how I got “SilverRain.”
I crack myself up.
Now, Tracy, I’m sure you know you don’t have any gray hairs. They are white. 🙂
I have so much white hair that last week, when one of my daughters was playing with my hair, she screamed! I guess she hadn’t noticed before?
At this point, I’m not caring, but maybe that’s because of the way redheads tend to fade into white. But I really don’t want to be white. I hated my hair until I was an adult, and now I’m kind of attached to being a redhead. At least I finally understand why white haired women, who used to be redheaded, always feel compelled to tell me that they had the same hair color when they were young. It’s rare enough to be kind of an identity thing.
Actually, I’ve never really thought of it before, but you’re right.
So why do we call them “gray” hairs??
Because the white, when visually blended by our eyes with brown/black hair looks gray. 🙂
Is this really true, that they are never gray? Well, we learn something new every day. 🙂
There are several women in my ward who have decided to embrace the gray and let it all grow in. I think they are awesome. I wonder what I will do, being blond. But my dad has a genetic condition (he got it from his MOM) whereby he lost pigment (his hair is truly white…pigmentless) in the space of a summer and went white at age 38. Uh, I’ll be 37 this year….hmmmmmmm……)
The problem with me letting all the gray come in, is that my head would look like a skunk’s back. No kidding.
My hair is naturally jet black. I was plucking out all the grays. Achem…. excuse me, I mean whites. 🙂 Then I started coloring it.
So can you picture what my head looks like after a month? My hair is white from the scalp and out about a half inch. Then it’s jet black the rest of the way down.
I’m pretty much doomed to continuing to color my hair, unless I don’t mind having a white streak going down my part, that continues grow in length. By the time 6 months were to go by, my hair would be white from scalp and all the way down to the tops of my ears, then jet black the rest of the way to the ends. :shocked:
Remember the lead singer from the group “Berlin”? She sang “Take My Breath Away”, the love theme from the movie “Top Gun”? Remember her hair in that video??? Yup– pretty much like that.
— I think I’d rather keep coloring my hair!:)
I’ve watched a couple of older friends stop coloring their hair. It was much as you described…kind of painful.
They have dye removal. Or you could just start using temporary dye until it grows out . . . .
Hm. If I end up having to choose between skunk’s back and dying, I’d go to dying, I think. 🙂
I sincerely hope you meant dyeing. Bad hair isn’t worth dying over! 😉
Wow… I didn’t know there was such a thing. But still, it wouldn’t really work for me. I think I’d still have the same problem. Most of my hair is still naturally black. My hair is long, stopping just below the shoulder blades. So if I were to use a dye remover, I’d probably have about 3-4 inches of white at the crown of my head and the rest would be black.
I sincerely hope you meant dyeing. Bad hair isn’t worth dying over! 😉
ROTFLMHO. I am usually such a good speller. I guess I won’t go back and edit, though. That is tooooooo funny. Seriously. So good. That is definitely a notable quotable for my next family letter. Slot #1.
You are all welcome for the comic relief of the day. (I guess you have to thank Alison because I wouldn’t have seen it. I guess I don’t die – er, I mean dye – enough to know how to spell the -ing form of the word.)
I needed that laugh today. wahahahahahhahahahahaaaaaaa!
MY own experience. I had/have a lot of white, mostly on the top layer. I got tired of dyeing my hair so I thought I’d go natural— only I decided to help it a little. So I had the hair dresser keep weaving more and more white blond into my brown hair till it was nearly all blond. then we stopped and let the white come in. After about a year of keeping it chin length it was all natural..—-
AFTER ALLLLLL THAT– I decided I didn’t like it. Or rather I did until someone told me I was the spitting image of Barbara Walters. I wasn’t flattered. I’m 48, not 68.
So, I’m back to dyeing my roots brown every two weeks again. And now I feel 30 again.
I’m all for dying.
Also, I think they did teach Pi when I was in 6th grade, only I didn’t understand it. It was a mystery. it wasn’t till they retaught it in Algebra in 9th grade that I got what that was all about.
he he Daisy– you made the same typo that Michelle did.
Surely, you’re not “all for dying”… you mean “dyeing”, right? 😉
Well written article. I love the clever ending! Just an interesting note on the comment in the article about the 12-year-old seeming more immature than we were–
I work with youth and have been to a lot of youth development seminars and so forth. Research is actually showing that the maturity level of youth is changing. When we were kids we matured physically between 12-14 (the majority of kids— some were earlier and some later) and we matured emotionally at about the same age. What is happening now is that kids are maturing physically at a much younger age, sometimes as young as 7 and 8, while the emotional maturity is becoming later and later due to our lifestyle and social structure. Youth today do not mature emotionally until 15, 16, 17 and sometimes as late as 18.
So . . . what we have now are young people who have not matured emotionally walking around in bodies that look and feel much older. It is so important that we as parents help our children through this difficult time. It has always been a challenge, but this adds a whole new dimension to things.
As far as what kids are learning now days— I think they are waaaay ahead of where I was! Today’s youth absolutely blow me away with their knowledge of academics. I was a straight A student and I’m not sure I ever learned some of the stuff these kids are learning! My 15-year-old son will be taking 4 college courses next year as a Junior! He’s way ahead of me! Of course, I went to a small school that didn’t offer college courses, so there’s my excuse! I actually took an advanced Korean class to avoid another math class when I graduated. I’m great at raising mathematicians from the time they can talk, but I’ll leave the advanced stuff to them after I convince them they are mathematical geniuses by teaching them fractions and roots and expontials 2-3 grades ahead of where it’s required!