Terry Marotta:
Real-Life Reflections of Ourselves

"Who IS that draggy-faced stranger you keep glimpsing in the reflection of the store windows?" you might wonder as you trudge through the holiday shopping.

Bad news, honey: that person is you.

And even when you run home and try smiling your biggest youth-impersonating smile in the mirror, it's no good; because besides having a face as frowny as old Scrooge's, you also now have teeth the exact same gray as your saddest old undies.

You're aging, baby, and you can only endure it.

UNLESS Santa should choose to bring you some products. Products and services, baby.

Like Crest's new White Strips, gel-coated lengths of plastic that you peel off and stick your teeth, so easy, the box says, you can use them almost anytime and anywhere. While reading and watching TV, it says. While doing housework, showering or "Surfing the Net." Which must mean you can't use them so well while kissing, say. Or eating. It claims you can use them while commuting (imagine it!) as long as you don't mind having to speak through them, or smile gooily at your fellow travelers. And with twice-daily use, you'll be flashing a whiter smile in just 14 short days!

But if it's neck-up perfection that you seek, you can also ask Santa for treatments with, Botox, the trade name for botulinum toxin, which temporarily weakens the nerve that feeds a targeted muscle. Injected into the skin of the face, it basically paralyzes certain muscles, to "unindent," all your indentations. Think of it as reformatting your whole document.

A book on Botox I happened to see on my grocer's shelf says that of course you can also do a number of other things about those frown lines, including (a) having fat taken from your fanny and injected into your face (a thousand punchlines occur to one here) and (b) having the miracle insulating substance known as Gore-Tex" inserted under its skin, thus making your cheeks as firm as Mrs. Claus's (and warming then for the ski slopes too, presumably.)

Compared to which a shot or two of Botox sound pretty easy.

Sure, you'll have red lumps at first and it'll sting like the dickens. And yes, the eyelids sometimes droop permanently post-Botox. And OK, SOMETIMES the paralysis irons down skin above one eyebrow but not above the other one, which continues to waggle and arch vividly, thus giving people what the book calls the "Jack Nicholson" look. Oh and if you're an actor you might not win certain parts in future auditions, it also says, since you can't actual convey any emotions.

But hey you might look younger, and if looking younger has brought you anything you really wanted in your life, then go for it and good luck to you.

God knows I sympathize. I've been doing some TV lately and am frankly horrified by how I look. It's not just crows' feet and frown lines. It's the faces I make, the comical squints and the eye rolls, enough to make folks fall into seizure states, like those children in Japan watching animations too jumpy for their little brains to process. So maybe getting my face paralyzed would be a public service.

AND, my teeth don't dazzle. AND, it turns out my biceps don't look a THING like Sarah Jessica Parker's.  

But saying that last makes me think of the time when my youngest crawled up into my lap. "I like your arms," he said, squeezing one of them hard with two hands. "I like this nice FAT part up here!"

So the heck with aesthetic perfection, I've got shopping to do!

And that trailing stranger I see in the windows?  God bless her, she comes with me every time!

Write Terry anytime at tmarotta@ attbi.com