Most days, I'm convinced that I'm getting old. The evidence is pretty overwhelming -- my oldest child is twenty, I'm balding, my knees hurt. The list goes on and on.
There's one thing I have, though, that tells me that maybe I'm not that old. That would be my zits.
I thought zits were a teen-age problem. I know they definitely started for me when I was a teen-ager. Here I am -- thirty years later -- and I just can't seem to get rid of them.
I've always been lucky in that I never have a lot of zits at the same time. It's usually just a lone ranger camping out somewhere on my face. But, there's always at least one. I really can't remember a time when I didn't have at least one blemish on my otherwise flawless face.
For the past 10 days or so, I've had a single zit on the left side of my forehead. It's about one inch about my eyebrow and an inch from my hairline. I've pretty much left it alone, giving it a rub a couple times a day just to see if it was getting bigger or smaller. About three days ago, it started to get smaller. By yesterday morning, it was almost gone. In fact, if you weren't looking for it, you'd hardly even notice the little red blemish that was still there.
This morning, I woke up and took a look at my zit in the mirror. Yep, it was almost gone. It was a good feeling. I filled up the sink with water so that I could shave, bent forward, and splashed some water on my face. As my hands brought the water up onto my face, I felt something with my left thumb. I stood up and peered back into the mirror. There it was, just at my jawline almost directly below the corner of my mouth. Like clockwork, as one zit was exiting, a new one was emerging to take its place.
Seeing my new zit, I wasn't angry or upset. Instead, I sighed a bit with relief. "Look at you," I told myself. "Who says you're getting old?"
This is where the magic happens.
