How I Know that 40 Isn’t the New 30

As of a couple of weeks ago, I can no longer say I’m on the backside of 40.  Forty and I have caught up with each other.  You could say that we’re walking right beside one another.  What you can’t say, though, is that I like it enough to reach over and hold its hand.  I probably couldn’t find it without a map and a magnifying glass anyway.

Last night I made a fast run to Walgreen’s.  While I was there I decided to check their stock of Cover Girl lipstick in my current favorite shade.  After scrambling around in the abyss that is my purse, I found the tube I was looking for, turned it over, and realized that I couldn’t read the writing.  Granted, it was three times smaller than the writing on any of the other lipstick tubes in my purse.  I’m not sure that even Steve Austin could’ve read it with his bionic eyesight.

However, I’ve always taken great pride — yes, that’s right, PRIDE — in my eyesight.  Need something written in fine print read?  I was your girl.  Need to find something tiny that you’d dropped?  Let me take a shot.  Can’t tell what that sign far away on the interstate says?  Loretta Lynn’s Dude Ranch, Next Exit.

Ahhhhhh…such was life in my 30s.

Well, you know as well as I do that we can’t let pride get in the way of finding our lipstick, so I did the only thing I could do besides lie down and have a stinking pity party fit right there in the middle of the store.  (Don’t think for a minute that it didn’t cross my mind, though.)  I shuffled over to the (gulp) reading glasses stand and tried on a 1.00 strength pair, then looked at the tube of lipstick again.  I was half hoping everything would be blurry, but I don’t have that kind of luck.  There it was, as plain as the age on my birthday cake.  I could read the name and number of the lipstick.

I may as well admit defeat…and my age, neither of which I could have done when I was 30.

(But dadgummit, I could read tiny print without help!)