The 80-Year Rule

Several girls in the youth group have \”gifted\” themselves with a tattoo upon turning 18. They get them on their shoulders, upper back, or neck. Just this weekend, I saw two new tattoos on my girls.

\”That looks pretty,\” I told one of the girls. \”And when you are an old woman, it will be really pretty down around your waist.\”

We all laugh, but come on, girls, we all know exactly where that tattoo is going to end up, right?

Later that day, when I was talking to another youth leader about it, she told me that she has implemented the 80-year rule in making many decisions. \”When I am 80,\” she asks herself, \”how will I feel about this decision?\” That\’s pretty good, I think, especially when it comes to our bodies.

It\’s no secret that as we age, our bodies…drift. I still have a vivid memory of the morning I looked into the mirror as I was drying my hair and realized I could no longer see certain body parts. They had started the slow slide–and it\’s been downhill ever since!

Think about your face. After a while it begins to hang off your jaw bone. Your neck shrivels and begins to look like a prune, if you can find it behind your face. If, at some point in your youth you had your cheek or your lip pierced, and you still haven\’t grown up enough to take it out, you might have trouble finding it later on in life. If you even remember that you had it to begin with. Your arms–oh my goodness!–your arms! One reason we older women are called angels is because when we raise our arms it appears we have \”wings\”.

Here a few things we might want to consider in the 80-Year Rule plan:
-Tattoos of any kind will eventually melt with your skin into something unrecognizable and undesirable.
-Tattooed-on eyelashes will become part of the wrinkles on your cheek, resembling skin cancer/liver spots.
-Nothing lovlier than tattooed-on red lips against an ash white face, right?
-That heart above your breast will end up around your waist.

And piercings! belly-button piercing will be covered by your—um, nevermind.
Don\’t even want to think where piercings in other body parts will end up, but I can tell you, you might get lots of compliments about that unusual knee piercing (you get my drift, right? –pun intended).

Let\’s see…Well, those artificial body parts, for instance. Consider all the plastic folks are putting into their body in an effort to stay young looking. Now, consider all those parts that aren\’t artificial wrinkling and jiggling around the fake stuff. My personal opinion is that older women who are \”enhanced\” are more unbecoming than those who choose to age naturally. Others may hold a different view on that, but this is my blog, so there.

In honor of growing older, and as a way to laugh through the pain ;o)))), I have developed a new line of clothing called Landslide! Someday soon, I\’ll post pics of the items I have developed so far.

Seriously, though, there are life-altering decisions that could stand the test of the 80-Year Rule. I\’ll blog about those later. I have to clock back in to work, now.