Cracks in the anti-aging creams

<p>I want my money back. Even more than wanting my money back, I want to quit getting sucked in.</p><p>I was leafing through a magazine and saw a full-page ad for a moisturizer claiming it yielded better results than similar expensive creams costing $200, $300 and $400.</p><p>Amazing, I thought. Maybe I should get this.</p><p>Then I realized I already have it. I purchased it a month ago. I don’t know what a $400 cream will do, but this little baby didn’t do anything.</p><p>It’s in a drawer along with a new lotion I saw advertised on television that will erase lines and wrinkles from your neck. I’ve had lines on my neck since I was 7 years old. I just learned they’re called necklace lines. I would have preferred the jewelry.</p><p>I bought the neck cream for a few bucks at the grocery. Threw it right in the cart along with the lettuce, onions and chicken like it was a staple. It probably should be.</p><p>My neck and décolletage or decoupage or whatever you call it have not noticeably improved.</p><p>The commercial says 90 percent of women saw noticeable improvement in two weeks. How is it that I am always in the 10 percent that never sees improvement?</p><p>If we all saw the age-defying results that all the creams, moisturizers and wrinkle-erasers promise, nearly every woman would be walking around looking like a 20-year-old.</p><p>So, your 20-year-old son says to his 20-year-old girlfriend, “Meet my mother. Yes, she does look your age, doesn’t she?” How confusing.</p><p>As much as we’d like to turn back the hands of time, it’s not possible. You might be able to nudge the second hand a notch or two, but beyond that it’s virtually impossible. Not even with a sledge hammer. A scalpel and a plastic surgeon, maybe, but not a sledge hammer.</p><p>Not long ago, one of the grands was sitting next to me and I felt her staring at my face. Finally, she said, “Grandma, did you know you have lines on your lips?”</p><p>She said it with the same sort of alarm I would use asking if anyone else heard the smoke detector going off.</p><p>I ignored her.</p><p>“Well, did you, Grandma?”</p><p>I continued ignoring her.</p><p>She got right up in my face, pointing with her soft little 6-year-old finger, and in her sweet little voice said, “And you have lines here and here and here.”</p><p>Who needs a magnifying mirror?</p><p>And yet I still slather on the creams, hoping against hope, working to preserve what is left.</p><p>We took four grands to a small museum recently. An elderly woman working the front desk asked if they were my kids or my grandkids. I knew better than to let it go to my head, which was a good thing because in the next breath she told me to park my bicycle outside.</p><p>I didn’t have a bicycle. I had a stroller. And a baby was in it.</p><p>I rest my case. And my face.</p>