I married a slow chewer.
Granted, chewing slowly and deliberately is a good thing because it’s healthier and aids digestion, so I can’t fault him (much). I used to try to match Fletch bite for bite but he masticates each morsel no less than fifty times, whereas I fear that I eat like a duck.
When I mirror him, by the time I hit thirty or so chews, whatever was in my mouth has vaporized. I don’t know where it goes; maybe it’s absorbed through my gums. And that’s for regular food. If we get something chewy like deep-dish pizza, it can take him an hour and a half to finish his meal and this is not an exaggeration.
With the exception of pizza night which takes place in front of the TV, we sit at the table together for every dinner and often, lunch. I can’t complain about the slow chewing (much) because we spend the whole time talking. We’ve gone from blizzard to below zero temps and neither one of us has left the house in a while, so lately we’ve had no adventures to share at supper. With zero news of the outside world, we discuss what’s wrong with everyone else, a topic that never gets old.
Lately, we’ve been deliberating something that keeps popping up on my radar, namely the existence of Sephora Tweens. Apparently, Generation A has taken an interest in skin care, which doesn’t seem bad, right? I didn’t even consistently wash my face every night until my late 20s, so I have no room to talk about beginning good habits early.
And yet.
The Sephora Tweens aren’t just doing the dermatologist-recommended basics, though, which entail cleansing, moisturizing, and protecting with sunscreen. Oh, no. They are sweeping into Sephora and annihilating the Drunk Elephant testers, wreaking general havoc. Following North West’s august footsteps, they’re creating ten-step skin routines, loading up on anti-aging serums and retinols.
Let me ask you this: WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?
These serums and potions are meant for us, those Gen Xers who laid in the sun, coated in a mixture of baby oil and iodine, armed with a foil-wrapped Frampton Comes Alive double album to reflect the rays on our necks. We are the ones who tanned ourselves into footballs. We are the ones who didn’t consistently wash our faces with anything other than the bathroom’s community bar of hand soap until after we got married. And if we did a nod to skincare, it was tearing off our epidermis with the ground walnut shells found in the Aapri Apricot Facial Scrub, a substance they use now to get paint off furniture and secrets out of Gitmo detainees.
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