I don't know when it happened.  I don't know how it happened.  Well, all right, I sort of know.  Oh, I knew it happened to people - other people though, not me.  I saw it happening every day all around me.  You suddenly bump into someone you've known all your life but haven't seen recently.  You smile, shake hands or hug and chat.  Afterwards, as you walk away, you think to yourself, "Wow!  Donald is sure showing his age.  How old is he anyhow?"  Then you remember;  he was a year behind you in school.  A pall descends on you, and just like that you don't want to think about it.  Ah, but it has a way of cornering you, of sneaking up and then leaping in an all out attack: 
the inevitable, devastating truth of impending old age. 

            It  wasn't so long ago when I first noticed one of my fingers just wasn't as straight as it used to be, and the knuckle, well, the knuckle was red and lumpy - swollen.  My hands weren't one of my better features to begin with.  Delicately tapered fingers capped with lustrous, elegant nails had not been doled out to me.  Didn't really matter; I did the best I could with what I had, but I didn't need red bumps - painful red bumps I might add, especially on damp, cold days.   

            It was on one of those days as I was rubbing my fingers to ease the ache, I suddenly, with my mind's eye, saw Mrs. Amour.  Strange how some things come back to haunt you.  Mrs. Amour had been my fourth-grade mathematics teacher - except back then it was called plain old arithmetic.  Regardless of what it was called, it was a subject the intricacies forever eluded me and automatically instilled in me a gripping fear of Mrs. Amour.  She was old.  Please keep in mind that was from the viewpoint of a nine-year-old.  Now, of course, I realize she was probably just somewhere in her mid-forties.  Every day she gave us a problem to work on silently at our desks, then she would prowl the room, a ruler clenched in her hand, stopping to peer over the shoulder of some panicky, perspiring, hopelessly lost child - usually me.  Heart pounding, I would pray silently, "Please, God, let her stop by Dora, not me.  Please, please, please! 

               Someday I hope to ask God why He apparently ignored my plea, because inevitably - inevitably - she would stop at my desk.  "What are you doing, child?" she'd sigh.  Then, with her ruler she'd point out various numbers on my paper with rapid-fire directions that I couldn't possibly follow, even if I had been listening - which I hadn't.  I was too busy and appalled staring at her fingers curled around the ruler.  Yep!  Red bumps all across her knuckles.  I thought they were probably the result of the tight grip she had on that ruler as she hit little kids.  Well, it's retribution, that's what it is!  Punishment!  Not only did God totally ignore my prayer back then, but as the years passed, He bestowed upon me Mrs. Amour's bumpy, red knuckles.   

            I wish it had stopped there, but it never does, does it?  I try to avoid mirrors, but if I in a casual moment catch a glimpse of my reflection, it's a stranger looking back at me.  Oh, my word, there I am!  The human version of a shar-pey, those poor wrinkled dogs.  Where did all those lines come from?  Where did my lips go, and what is that dumpling doing under my chin?  Good grief!  And to think I go out in public! 

            Ah, but I have learned something.  I am still me.  Age is just an illusion.  Look into the eyes of an 80- or 90-year-old.  Do you know what you will see?  You will see the soul:  never changing, forever young.  No one, nothing can change or destroy the child who lives within us all.  Oh, and by the way, I never saw Mrs. Amour hit anyone.