Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese

Billie Burke said that (FYI: she was the actress who played Glinda, the good witch in The Wizard of Oz.).

Last week I went to a free concert at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown San Diego. Justin Nozuka was playing. (Very talented young man--check him out!) It was a great free event, hosted by the radio station Sophie @ 103.7. It was low-key and Nozuka has this soulful voice that's so easy to listen to.

But the reason I'm posting this blog is not about the music, although I would recommend the artist. The reason I'm posting is the mid-life crisis lady in the women's restroom.

After the show ended, and before my friends and I headed out in the Gaslamp District to walk around, we hit the loo. There was a woman in one of the stalls chatting away--I assumed she was talking on the phone. No one else in the restroom was responding to her, or even seemed to be listening. But after she left the stall and went to the sink, she continued her ranting and raving about how she wished she was young again. "I wish I was young and beautiful again." It was so much more fun.

I peered through the crack behind the door of my own stall. No phone. No blue tooth attached to her ear. She was definitely talking to herself. For what seemed like endless minutes. I was afraid to come out. I didn't want to walk out in all of my twenty-three years while she bitterly commiserated about her lost (and apparently ancient) youth.

When I was a kid, my dad used to jokingly sing the golden ticket song from the old 1970s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (which was, in fact a musical). Only he changed the words. Instead of singing "I've got a golden ticket, I've got a golden twinkle in my eye..." yada yada, he would sing, "I've got a golden ticket. Nobody else but me! I've got a golden ticket. Nee-ner, nee-ner, nee!"

That's what I felt like I would doing to this bitter, fifty-something woman if I walked out in my wrinkle-free, no gray-hairs, everything-sitting-exactly-where-it's supposed-to glory. Gallivanting about the restroom of the Hard Rock waving my beautiful youth in her face. So I waited until she finally left to emerge, her last remark to herself, "Well, at least I own my own home. At least I can say that."

I like Billie Burke's quirky comment about age and cheese. I hope that someday when I'm "old," I don't ever wish to be something else, or somewhere else in life. I like to think of old age as an award--gray hairs being the crown of glory, of course. Age demands respect, and that starts with the self.