Lucy’s Secret to Staying Young
One of my favorite comediennes, Lucille Ball, once said, “The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.” Honestly, I love Lucy, but as Desi Arnez would say, “Luuuuucy, you got some splainin’ to do!” For one thing; how do you live honestly but still lie about your age? Perhaps only red-heads can get away with that.
Even if you took the lying part out of the equation, which may mean an early demise according to Lucy, there’s still the issue of trying to live honestly while you’ve got children scampering about.
It’s very difficult, and indeed, not even advisable, to tell the truth when a four-year old asks why those two people on TV are sucking on each other’s faces. I suppose you could simply say they’re kissing. But unless this is your first child, you know that the next question will be “why?” That one is much more difficult to explain especially with the added possibility of a constant stream of “why?”s after each explanation. By the end of these carefully constructed answers to “why?”, you will have told him the intricacies of a Caesarean Section and how Uncle Larry got a vasectomy so that will never happen again. The curious four-year old will then need some major therapy.
Veteran moms know that the correct answer to “Why are they sucking face?” is: “I have no idea. Let’s see if Dora The Explorer is on.” So much for living honestly. I’m probably going to hell for that. At the very least, if Lucy is correct, I will have aged like a very sharp cheddar cheese.
As for eating slowly; if Lucy had had a little practice eating faster, she wouldn’t have had to stuff all those little chocolates into her bra when they came down the conveyor belt.
Chocolates are one of those delectable treats that I could probably down at the rate of four per second on a good day; even faster if a straw came with them.
However, Lucy said we have to eat slowly if we want to stay young. I may be doomed, then, because eating slowly is the equivalent of possibly starving to death in my house. And what is the point, I ask you, of looking young while lying in a casket?
“She looks so young!”
“That’s because she is.”
If I don’t touch something on my plate for 30 seconds, my husband deems it fair game. Sometimes he doesn’t even wait to ask, “Are you going to eat that?”
If my dinner roll is the only one left on the table, I have to guard it with my life. I’ve learned that if I hear the words “Wow! Look over there!” my roll is in imminent danger of being roll-napped to the other side of my kitchen table by an unscrupulous diner.
I suppose that Lucy probably looked so young because Desi never had designs on her meal and her kids were so well-disciplined that subterfuge was never employed to abscond with her dinner rolls. I think perhaps staying young just isn’t in the cards for me.
I take consolation in the fact that if I’m going to get old anyway, I might as well eat as fast as I want. So, if I ever find myself in front of a conveyor belt full of chocolates, I will not have to stuff them in my bra to make them disappear.
You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more columns and info about her books.
You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com
for more columns and info about her books.