they say it's your birthday

It's my birthday, too.

Technically, it's not my birthday until 11:45 p.m., but I'll be damned if I'm waiting another 24 hours to be old. Embrace the ancient, I say. And so, I'm ancient.

Or at least that's what my kids tell me.

As I slip over the top of the youth hill and head down into goat years, I'm discovering all kinds of new age-related afflictions. Laugh lines being the most obvious...and no, they are not wrinkles, A, so you can go on and bite me...but even more disturbing than the laugh lines are the, get ready for it, zits.

Yes, I said zits. Can you even stand it?

I cruised through high school without a single zit. Four years of teenage hormone hell without a single blemish. My friends absolutely hated me, of course, but I had not an ounce of guilt over it. In fact, I frequently taunted my most favorite people with my Noxema commercial skin.

So tell me, now that I'm goat old, why do I have zits?? I wash my face. I cleanse my pores. The Noxema has been replaced by age-defying, anti-wrinkle, and yet still-gentle-on-the-skin products that cost more than I'm shelling out for gasoline these days. Yet there they are, angry little red bumps with ookie little ook volcanos spewing, well, ook.

How ridiculous.