skin deep

I received a letter in the mail recently, which raised my curiosity. The letter bore no return address. Thinking that my curiosity would be satisfied as soon as I opened the letter, to my surprise there was no information inside the letter except the words, hand printed, "Walt, read it, it works. Then, as if this were a detective story where the murderer carelessly dropped a glove at the scene of the crime, there was the letter J. Hmmm, a glove? J? Could it be O. -- Nah. What it was was a full page of a newspaper ad promoting the virtues of wrinkle-free skin. I'm still curious and a bit annoyed. I am puzzled because I can't think of any acquaintance or relative who lives in California (the place of origin according to the post office stamp), who knows my latest mailing address perfectly and who cares so much for me that he/she would want me to have perfect wrinkle-free skin and then not want to be thanked for such revolutionary advise. Furthermore, I am insulted to have someone suggest to me that wrinkles are a curse. And then to insinuate that I would be better off if I got rid of something for which I worked hard for years to call my own, is an affront to my intellegence.

I think wrinkles are a thing of beauty. They are the cartoonist's subject of caricatures; the artist's favorite lines in a portrait. Haven't you seen the old wizened faces that have the skin of a rhinoceros in a photograph? Beauty may be only skin deep, the skin 0f a wrinkled face is deep. It's like a landscape that shows years of experience etched in every wrinkle. Look at the face with skin that is smooth like a billiard ball then add a few wrinkles and you have a character that has a story to tell. You're looking at history. Sadness and joy permanently exhibited. You see endurance, hard fought accomplishments, longevity.

There is one more thing to say about wrinkles -- they don't hurt.