by Cindi Pearce (Thu Mar 11, 2010)
I had just climbed out of my parked car and was toting a grocery bag and
sipping sweet tea from McD's, heading for my house, when a car soared by and a
passenger called out, ‘Whoo!'
As in, ‘Whoo, mama!'
It was a good ‘whoo.' I
appreciated the ‘whoo.' It made
me grin. I was flattered. The voice sounded young, which was even better. It
wasn't an old geezer admiring another old geezer. I discreetly (well, come on!)
sneaked a peek at the car. Yo, brother, you just made my day.
I told my daughter that I had just gotten a ‘whoo.' Share the joy with
me, daughter. I was mighty pleased by my ‘whoo.' It was one week before my 56th
birthday. Enough said?
My daughter harrumphed. ‘Well, look at that top you have on.' There was
nothing especially revealing about my top. A little cleavage was showing but
the ‘whoo'-er hadn't seen my cleavage. He'd ‘whoo'ed at my backside, and I told
her so.
‘Oh, no, no, no,' she
held up her hands in protest. ‘You can't have the butt and the boobs. You can't
have them both.'
Oh? I didn't know that. Of course, I do know that I don't have the butt.
My daughter claims that I have the ‘Highland County, Ohio flat butt syndrome,'
whatever that means, which, damn it, I sort of do know what she is
referring to.
She has the butt. She has J-Lo's and Jessica Biel's rump all rolled into
one. I have never seen such a butt. I noticed, when she was just a tot, that
she had this amazingly hard, heart-shaped bootie, some real junk in her trunk,
that I knew hadn't come from my side of the family. She is kind of famous for
her butt. You see it coming or, rather, going.
I said okay, waving the white flag of surrender, keeping the peace. This
isn't a contest. Pay me no mind. I'm just slightly to the left of pathetic as I
fade off into Baby Boomer Invisible Land; just making imbecilic, babbling
conversation. She nodded; satisfied.
However, I felt a teeny bit deflated. Couldn't she be happy for my ‘whoo'? Did she have to rain on my
parade?
The daughter thought it was funnier than hell when some old man once said
I looked like a peacock. I have no idea what that meant. She didn't mind
that commentary one iota. Of course, whether looking like a peacock is a
good thing or a bad thing remains up for debate.
I remember my mother telling me a story, when she was about my age. She
was standing by her car, with her back to the street. Someone drove by and
yelled, ‘Hey, baby.' Mom was very cute: Little, shapely, with stunning black
hair. She turned around to look at her admirer. The ‘someone' saw her face,
which, by the way, was exceptional even then, although not the face of a
20-year-old by a long shot. She heard him say to the driver, ‘Oh, she's old.' And off they sped.
She laughed when she told me the tale. I thought she handled it very
well. Along with our ability to be
flattered by drive-by ‘whoo's' and ‘Hey, baby's,' we oldsters are also
perfectly capable of rolling with the punches and laughing at ourselves.
