You don't look as old as you think you are

A pudgy boy about nine or ten years old splashes over to me at the pool and flashes a grin. He says, "You don't look as old as you think you are." Another grin. Whoa! What is this? Now I am a woman like so many others who was never in love with her body. Oh, there were a few brief instances in the life where the top of my body matched the bottom and there were no extra jiggles and creases. But now I have let my hair go to its intended mostly salt and pepper look and I stopped with the make-up a long time ago - it just settles into the wrinkles. I do hold onto my one European custom - red, red lipstick. Picture Sophia Loren leaning over a balcony in Greece: her white peasant blouse falling off one of her perfect brown shoulders, her black hair cascading down her back, and her mouth, half-open, inviting and red, red, red. Sounds like the cover of one of my mother's romance novels. As they say, the more flesh exposed on the cover, the racier the novel. Mom would read these books supplied by her sister but she rarely got through one. She read an eclectic assortment of literature: the local sports page, Garrison Keillor columns, a variety of women's magazines and cooking journals and Vanity Fair. She loved articles about the rich tycoons who were embezzling and then discovered and then fallen from their lofty, wealthy perches. She liked gossip, but mostly the sophisticated kind.
Anyway, I may need to frequent this north end pool more often. I usually visit the west end pool so I need not worry about somebody lifting my Curious George change purse from my rolled-up towel.