Like Oil and Water are Zits and Rain

I have zits on the back of my head.  This is how my body has decided to age.  Instead of getting zits in normal places, I now get zits in awkward places, such as my legs, chest, and now, the back of my head.  Those cutting my hair have to shave over and around the nasty bumps, so I tip profusely, as I'm sure all guilty-feeling zit-heads do.

As a younger man there were certain things I knew about aging, but the relocation of zits was not one of them.  I was under the impression that my pimple problem would eventually disappear.  But, now that I think about it, I also thought that I'd eventually stop eating Ho-Hos for breakfast.  I guess there was a lot I didn't know back then.

One thing I’ve known for a while about aging is the inevitable increase in our preoccupation with precipitation.  In fact, I can tell a person's exact year of birth based solely on the amount of time they spend talking about moisture.  My formula is simple: For each second of small talk that passes without a mention of "rain" or "snow" or "how much we need it," one can subtract 1 from 95, and the resulting difference is the person's age.  The equation, formally stated, is:

A = 95 - S_MF  (where A is age, and S_MF is moisture-free seconds)

Since it requires the combination of small talk and a stop watch, the formula can occasionally be cumbersome in everyday situations.  Nevertheless, it is indefectible for all persons between the age of twenty and ninety five.  At twenty, we may not know much, but we do know that we’re obligated to mention the weather within a minute and fifteen seconds of idle chit-chat.  By ninety five we’ve forgotten our children’s names, but we know beyond the shadow of doubt that WE NEED RAIN, and we don't have time for mincing words.  (Moreover, we figure that if we mention it to enough people, we might end up notifying someone who could do something about it.)

At the end of aging, I’ve long believed, comes death.  I also believe that, upon death, we enter a long tunnel of white light -- a tunnel that leads us from our earthly, meaty confines to our eternal, spiritual future.  Most of all I believe that, for we who live to a grand old age, our first few minutes in the tunnel are spent bitching about the drought-like conditions we had to endure on Earth. 

But let’s get back to the back of my head, which has zits: I don’t like them.  And I don’t like that my hair is turning gray this summer, at the very same time that my lawn is turning brown.  So the dance I dance tonight, my friend, is for a rain shower — preferably one contaminated with Grecian Formula and Clearasil.