Open a Door, Slam a Window

My hair finally grew long enough, and the weather finally cooled off enough, to make using a blow dryer possible and tolerable. I wasn’t sure I’d remember how to do it, and in what order to use the multiplicity of hair products I have stuffed into one of my vanity drawers (root lifter, mousse, heat protector, etc.) but I forged ahead, and I was pleased with the results.

So pleased, in fact, that I admired myself in front of my magic mirror (the one in my downstairs bathroom that always makes my face look magnitudes younger, smoother and thinner than it is) for several minutes. I tossed my head around, causing my new do to flop about fetchingly, creating a blowsy, tousled look that I thought was, well, sexy. And just as the little swoop over my forehead returned to its place, a little fluffier, but still holding its shape, I noticed something.

Something horrifying.

My hair stopped moving, but my neck did not.

HOLY CRAP. It’s come to this.

Wattle.

I have a wattle. No amount of stretching my neck or tilting my head upward will make those wobbly cords on the front of my neck, between my chin and my clavicle, disappear.

There is no beauty product (none that I’m willing to try, anyway) that can wipe that wattle away. I see an expanded wardrobe of turtlenecks and scarves in my immediate future.

After the shock of noticing my neck wobbling, the first thing that popped into my head was Ally McBeal, that lawyer show from the ’90s, which had a male lawyer character called Richard Fish, who had a serious wattle fetish.

I kid you not, this guy was enthusiastically turned on by the flappy folds of an older woman’s neck. The on and off object of his desire was played by none other than Dyan Cannon, who played a character called Jennifer “Whipper” Cone, a judge. Whipper dumped Fish when she caught him fingering Attorney General Janet Reno’s wattle (Reno was portrayed by actress Linda Gehringer) on the pretense of wiping away a smudge of something or other on Reno’s neck.

In another episode, Fish commiserates with a client that has a foot fetish who won’t allow the lawyers to use insanity as a defense for the crime of sneaking into a woman’s bedroom and tickling her feet.

“If you like feet, you’ll love wattle,” says Fish, unironically. Smiling.

So, just as I was thinking I had my mojo back, I find that, according to a very popular television dramedy of the 1990’s, I now could only be an object of desire to a singular subset of pervy wierdos.

But who needs romance, anyway? I’ve got October, and the horses we’ve been riding and the blue skies and the changing leaves and the pumpkins don’t care about my wattle. Plus, a wattle is a nice added touch for a witch costume I plan to cook up for a Friday “witches night out” event. No need for latex prosthetics here! I’ve got the crone look down!

Yay me.

trying to figure out more ways to make the best of it, I remain,

your blow-dried, wattle-wobbling, turtleneck-buying, witch-hat-wearing,

Ridiculouswoman