An article online caught my eye the other day. It was a list of ways that women could look 20 years younger. I gave up when I read the first one that said, “Weigh the same as you did when you were 18.” For pity sake, when I was 18 I hadn’t eaten 5,000 doughnuts and 55 Thanksgiving dinners, to say nothing of attended 200 Christmas parties and gone to a million wine tasting parties! And had a couple of children along the way! Give me a break!

In the same article were a bunch of hints for men on how to look 20 years younger. I decided to entertain myself with that.

One of the topics for men was “How to Live to 90 and Die Having Sex.” I find that absolutely hysterical and I’d like to hear from the wives out there who agree with me. In fact, I am betting there are some husbands out there who agree with me. I didn’t read that any further. I decided that was a bad idea. Ninety sounds like a great age but to die at 90 having sex sounds like something out of a bad “R” rated murder mystery.

There was another one that was called “Body Oddities Explained.” It talked about hair standing on end, brain freezes, earwax and toe jam. Doesn’t that sound just like something a bunch of men would sit around and talk about while downing a six-pack? I didn’t learn much from that section – nothing that I didn’t already know.

I learned in this article that the most common cosmetic enhancement men have is botox! Botox! I am impressed. No wonder some of the men I meet look like they have a frozen face. Is frozen face and botox related to brain freeze? Do frozen faces make old men look younger?

Men also have face-lifts. Yes, they really do! And if you’ve ever seen a man who has had a face-lift you are going to know that he has had a face-lift. He looks at you and doesn’t blink. His eyebrows never move and his nostrils don’t twitch. His chin stays in the same place when he talks and if you say something funny to him, he doesn’t laugh.

There was a whole section on the torso. The thing that really got my goat about this section was that it did not advise men to weigh what they did when they were 18! Instead it suggested to men that they could “Feel as fit as you did in your 20s—even if you’ve done a lot of sitting around since then.” Now doesn’t that just frost you! Supposedly if a man embarks on a 5-day-a-week cardiovascular workout for 6 months he can reach the cardiovascular fitness level he had when he was tested 30 years earlier. To be honest, I do not know a man on the face of this earth who has a clue what his cardiovascular fitness level was 30 years earlier. And I don’t know a man on the face of this earth who would embark on a five-day-a-week cardiovascular workout for six months – unless he was out of work, recently divorced or suffering from an overactive thyroid.

I guess one of the main problems men face as they age is either going bald or gray. A couple of over the counter drugs that stimulate hair growth were mentioned and one of them was said to work 50% of the time. There’s another one that men can get by prescription only that works by blocking a certain hormone that causes hair loss in men. I say if your dad was bald, plan on being bald. Men are also encouraged to color their hair, if they have any and it’s gray.

All in all, the craziest idea was to eat more vegetables, beans and olive oil. The article claimed that elderly men whose lifetime diets were rich in these foods had fewer wrinkles than men who ate a lot of meat, butter and other dairy products. Frankly, I’d rather hang around an old guy who didn’t eat all that much in the way of beans and so forth, even if it means looking at a few wrinkles. It reminds me of the “poem” my grandson so proudly recites…….beans, beans, musical fruit…………..