Annapalooza

Well, I’ve found my demographic. Yup, in the past year I’ve discovered that apparently I’m really appealing to the sixty-plus-year-old gentlemen out there. That’s right – eat your hearts out, ladies; I’ve got that Tony Randall market covered, so you can all just step aside. I really can’t say how the thirty and forty-somethings are feeling, but at least I know that the retired set digs me.

How do I know this? Because unlike younger men, these guys just tell it like it is. They straight up told me they thought I had it going on. Jealous much?

The first occasion was while watching a Brewer game at our local dive bar, or as my husband and I like to call it, “The Place Where We Go to Make Ourselves Feel Like Geniuses.[1]” Anyway, after making some smart-ass comments with the rest of the guys and then doing a shot with them, Mr. At-Least-Sixty tells my husband that he’s a very lucky man and then proceeds to buy me a drink. At that point I figured I was only a rock star because we had treated for the shots, but then I continued to get attention from similar gents around town.

Within the last six months I’ve had similarly aged gentlemen shower me with compliments. One told me I was wonderful. Several told me my hair was beautiful. Another told my husband to move over because he wanted to sit by me. And lastly, one just straight up told me that he thought I was really attractive, and that I reminded him of the cartoon character Little Lulu. (Yes, I realize this last bit sounds a little creepy.)

So I then did what any other woman my age would do, and that is Google Little Lulu to see if she was one of those smokin’ hot cartoon broads like Jessica Rabbit or maybe one of Dick Tracy’s girlfriends.

Hmmm. She’s a little girl with springy curls who “has good intentions but ends up getting into mischief.” This may have just gotten creepier.

Lest you think I am bragging, I say to you, Bitch, please. I am being hit on by much poorer Michael Douglases, but I am still going to own this. It’s rough out there, so I will take the compliments where I can find them. One day I’ll feel hot and the next I’m getting barked at while shopping at Kmart with my mom. (Yes, this really happened to me.) Another time I had a girl repeatedly say to her brother, “Rashad, isn’t that lady ugly?” while pointing at me. I was shopping then too. WTF? I don’t know what was more heinous: Being so mean and rude, or ruining a perfectly good shopping day.

It’s definitely made me realize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I just wish everyone’s eyes were like that of a sixty-five-year-old man.

“This Is Little Lulu” (Photo credit: Jim, the Photographer) My Alleged Doppelganger