OLD WOMEN!

I just love the commercial urging women to get a mammogram with the catchy tune about "When I grow up, I want to be an old woman!" Are you familiar with it? It portrays older women in such a positive way as happy, active, dancing, and cheer leading ladies. Love it!

Below is a picture of the old women in my young life when I was 11 years old - two grandmothers and two great-grandmothers.

Here are some random thoughts about old women:

1. Old women attend a lot of funerals. Statistically, women out live men.

2. Most old women are grandmothers. They have time to build Lego castles and help dress Barbie in her skinny jeans. They are a wealth of information, and can discuss anything with a kid from grasshoppers to why 13-year old girls act the way they do, and why boys can be such dorks on occasion.

3. Just from experience, old women can usually put a decent meal on the table. They can make dinner out of nothing - give them a couple of eggs and a dib and dab of this and that, and they can fix a meal.

4. Old women really appreciate their modern conveniences because they remember what it was like to do laundry on a wringer washing machine and wash dishes by hand after a Thanksgiving dinner for 20.

5. They have learned the virtue of patience. Among other things, they have the patience to untie knots with ease - it doesn't matter if it is a rope, fishing line, but especially a kindergartner's shoe lace.

6. Today's old women are with it. They email, shop online, and some even blog! They own iPods, iPhones, and Kindles. They text and twitter and are on face book.

7. Old women can run a power saw to miter a corner on molding; or run a sewing machine to mend socks or a hole in a pair of jeans. And they practically can do it all at once - the original multi-taskers.

8. Old women walk to the gym, drive to church, fly to Europe, and cruise to Alaska.

9. Old women are smart. I bet there is even one out there that understands the proposed health care plan.

10. Old women together can laugh louder and have so much fun around a table with a cup of coffee and some chocolate.

12. Old women are having a great time out in the world today!!

I'M ALL GROWN UP; AND PROUD, HAPPY, AND CONTENT TO BE AN OLD WOMAN.

By the way, I do what the commercial urges and I get my mammogram every year. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, so make arrangements for your mammogram today. Don't you want to grow up to be an old woman?

Sally

P.S.: If you want to know what I look like as an old woman, take the grandmother in the middle of the back row above; blow-dry her hair and dress her in jeans and a t-shirt. That would be me.