I was going to post something completely different today, but I’m still on this Perception kick.  I can’t help it.  I saw something today that just blew my little mind in a time-warp kind of way.  It’s aging that’s doing it to me.  Not that I’m going senile or anything.  It’s just that lately, I feel like I’ve been in a space capsule and I just came down to earth after 25 years.  My mind stayed young while at the same time, I got smarter, yet my body has aged and has become the likeness of my grandmother.  It’s like I don’t know what happened to all the years between when I was a teenager and now. 

Oh yeah! I was a mom!  Completely caught up in a whole different world.  I was here.  You could see me.  But I was so completely absorbed in my children’s world that it’s like I didn’t notice what was happening right outside my window.

And things like THIS happened.  Look at this!  What the Hell happened to him?  Did he completely lose his mind?  Aside from the fact that he’s warped his face into something from The Planet of the Apes, the man is wearing a tuxedo jacket with pajama pants!  In public!

This is Michael Jackson.  I say that like you don’t know that already because I was somehow surprised by this.  Here, he’s in Las Vegas about to celebrate his 50th birthday.  50, people!!  He’s only a couple of years older than I am.  I grew up listening to The Jackson Five, then Thriller, and so on.  I still have THIS image of him in my mind.  What happened to this guy?

This is Michael Jackson BEFORE he destroyed his face and started wearing his pajamas in public.  Look at him here.  He was so cute.  He had such great features, surely to grow into a perfectly handsome man.  What was it that made him see something in the mirror that needed such a drastic change?  How is it that his perception of himself was SO far off base from reality? 

You all know that I’ve been talking about age a lot lately, what with my baby turning 24 years old, menopause, graying hair and wrinkles I didn’t see coming.  I didn’t mention gravity.  Yeah, NOT my friend. 

At my son’s age, I was married, had a baby, lived in Japan and “thought” I was a grown-up and again, I thought I knew it ALL.  Now I look at my children and I SEE grown men, but my mind and my heart, I still see my babies.  In fact, everybody their age are considered babies to me.  I know that’s not fair, but I tell you, this aging thing is perplexing the crap out of me.

It’s like when we’re young, we think we know it ALL and life is an open book and we can write whatever we want, and our parents are “old” and they don’t know anything about anything and their life is nearly over.  Again, it comes down to perception of youth and how vastly it differs from the perception of . . . well. . . someone over 40. 

I’m just as guilty of warped perception as the next guy.  When I was eight years old, my mother was out in our front yard with another neighbor mom and she did a cart-wheel.  I distinctly remember thinking, “She’s gonna hurt herself.  She’s too old to be doing that!”  She was 28 years old for goodness sake!  My little eight year old mind perceived that she was so old that she was going to break a hip.

Somewhere around this same timeframe, my dad’s aunt and uncle were at our house celebrating their birthdays (they shared the same birthday).  They were turning 45 years old.  Again, my little 8 or 9 year old self, who loved these people dearly, was frightened and thought, “Gosh! 45! They’re going to DIE soon.”  My 8 year old mind seriously perceived that 45 was ready kick the bucket.

Then when I lived in Japan, my mom came out to visit for my oldest boy’s first birthday. (I was pregnant with my youngest at the time)  She was about 43 years old and she wanted to climb Mount Fuji with some friends.  My initial reaction was “Don’t you think you’re a little old for that?”  She looked at me like I was loopy.  She was only 43!  I look back at pictures of her on the mountain and I think how young she was.  My perception has done a complete 180.

My children who are in their early 20’s say they don’t think of me as being “old”.  They actually think I’m pretty cool.  But I wonder. . . because my oldest doesn’t think I can DO anything physical.  Maybe he thinks I’m gonna break a hip.  I think I’m going to tell them not to worry about me until I start wearing my pajamas in public.