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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33915 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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{H}onestly, make hay while the sun shines is bad advice. Most women who age terribly tend to do so in their late 20s or maybe early 30s.

You got it backwards. I'm advising that a lot of people delay getting serious about getting married until they, themselves, are past-ripe. Until the raft is inflating, or the hair is receding, or the skin is leathery from years of tanning beds and cigarettes, etc. The thing is that...

she's going to bloat out into something grotesque, like an self-inflating raft from which the pin has been yanked.

is mostly a choice. No one has to pull the pin.

is mostly a choice. No one has to pull the pin.

Exactly. Which is why if you make a conscious effort to take care of yourself, you don't have to worry about being past-ripe. You can't do anything about the receding hairline, but as a balding guy, that's honestly not a big deal. I look much better with a #1 buzz than I ever did with hair, and the upkeep is much simpler. Not exactly a "make hay" story but there was this girl who turned me down in middle school who I hadn't paid much attention to in high school and completely lost contact with afterward. When I was about 24 I was in my local neighborhood dive bar and I hear my name and turn to face an unfamiliar blimp. She said her name and I was completely speechless. She looked like a shipping hazard. She told me I looked different (I had long-ish hair at the time) and I was tempted to say "speak for yourself" but wisely held my tongue. Not that a middle school girlfriend would have turned into a lifelong steady, or that 24 is the age when this happens, but man, the possibility is always there, and I felt like I had somehow dodged a bullet a decade earlier.

I had something similar happen to me. Hit on a cute girl in high school and got knocked back. She got BIG and thought I was a sure thing at a party in my 20's. Nope, nope nope.

I was taking my grandmother to a Perkins pancakes last year and ran into someone, maybe, who I knew. I thought maybe I knew him, but I couldn't be sure. Because it looked like the quarterback from our high school football team, who was also the star pitcher on the baseball team, who I hadn't seen since high school, but holy shit he's a balloon. It's unbelievable. I kept stealing glances at him, but I'm not certain enough to walk over and say Hi Casey, it's FiveHour.

So I went home and had my wife look him up on facebook, and whaddyaknow, it was him.

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