The club (the home of homes) is a microcosm of society, representing perhaps the stranger bits of said society, but a representation nevertheless. As in everyday life, here too the mems of all shades wish to keep their youthful looks as long as they can. I could be unkind and say that in many cases the race is lost and the audience long since departed. There are those amongst us who pay no heed to the empty bleachers and so take to potions and quacks who promise much to willing ears and deliver but little. One only has to gaze at the four widows roosting by the grand entrance to the senior reading room, who search for the rare ambulatory widower with intact marbles before swooping down on him like a murder of crows.They are beautifully made up, with expressionless faces taut as drumheads, but their withered, spotty hands give them away. Why be something we are not, for the jig is up? Be yourself and show your face for what it is, a lovely etching of wisdom.
This is not just the case for the distaff side of the club for we have many examples of males refusing to play the game. I think one is understandably distraught when one loses one’s hair. Certainly I was. A granddaughter of mine, when she was but a babe, licked my pate and burbled that it was salty. I became known as “The Old Salt Lick.” I have had to live with that for some time as Honoria is now in her 20s. But here is my point: I am bald, so I got on with it!
However several of my contemporaries cannot see the forest, so they search the internet for a cure-all in the hair department. I think we might all have heard about it if there was a solution but not to their way of thinking. No, they believe bits of bark and musk ox droppings from Albania will do the trick, all on a website that produces photographs of hirsute shepherds as unassailable proof. They madly type their credit-card numbers and send them off to God knows where. Then they wait anxiously by front doors for courier parcels with the “New Day for Male-Pattern Baldness” from Dr. Xhenzer.
One mem arrived after a few days with his head looking like he had been made to sit in the electric chair without the obligatory wet sponge. Another appeared to have been caught in a fire and smelled of bacon. I say stuff and nonsense! Let us do the best we can with what we have and stop pretending there is a remedy for old age.
Speaking of websites, I am always encouraging people to start companies, and one of the Bright Young Things at the club has come up with a dandy. It is called “Don’t Embarrass Nana.” The kernel of the idea is that many recent widows have no idea what their husbands have been up to on their computers all these years. Apparently one grieving wife had to be hospitalized after she was playing about harmlessly on the still-warn laptop when up jumped a website. It purportedly examined something called Cold War-approved Russian pornography, which showed endless pictures of Mrs. Khrushchev in flowered bathing suits. You get the point.
I have often said a club mem will always race to a sick friend’s bedside to erase all objectionable material before the memsahib gets a gander. Sadly it does not happen enough, so this is where this new enterprise comes in. The children alert the company and all is made to disappear. No one wants a scene like a few weeks ago when at a funeral the widow began to verbally abuse her husband’s casket over something called “Philippines’ Finest Coconuts.” I did not fully understand but still. Call the company.
Copyright 2014 Major’s Corner
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