Passport

My birthday is Friday. For the first time, I am beginning to feel old.
I probably wouldn't be feeling this way had I not needed to renew my passport. My old passport had been expired for over a year, meaning the picture of me was of a bright eyed, smooth skinned nineteen year old. A picture that I actually liked. Well, a few weeks ago, I realized that my up and coming trip to Greece and Bulgaria was going to require a current passport, so I headed to the local Walgreens to have my picture made. I took the time to blow dry my hair, run the flat iron over it, and did my normal make-up routine. All this, just to be sure the picture would be decent.

The young teenage photo boy took my picture, then loaded it onto the computer... right in front of me. As the picture slowly appeared on the screen, I gasped, nearly choking on my gum, and exclaimed in horror, "That is so not me, I am not that old!" The boy glanced at me and snickered. I had these horrible bags under my eyes, which I am attributing to the poor fluorescent lighting, with crows feet almost an inch long coming from the corners of my eye. Unfortunately, I cannot attribute that to anything other than maybe I smile a lot? Not so sure. The clincher though, is that my nose looked twice as big as it actually is. I have no idea how that happened. I always liked my nose with the little ball at the end of it, and always believed that it fit my face. But oh no, not in this picture. For the first time in my life, I looked at myself and felt very unattractive. Vain, I know.

It's taken me weeks now to process through this ordeal, and I am still having some trouble with it. I have to have this stinkin picture for 10 years. Then it hit me, when I have to renew this one, the next one will surely be worse, unless I have a chin tuck, an eye lift, and a nose job. Don't noses continue to grow? Dear Lord, help me.