I Prefer Spinster

Soon, I will be one year older. Since my parents were told my brother and I would die before our sixteenth birthdays, I am not ashamed of my age. I will proudly turn fifty-four on January eighth, which happen to be Elvis Presley's birthday. So when you are driving down the road on January eighth and the radio DJ says, "Elvis Presley would have been seventy-five years old today" you should shout, "Darn, I forgot Cathy's birthday again!"

As my birthday gets closer and closer, I continue to ask myself over and over this question, "Is this the year I officially become an Old Maid school teacher?" On the sitcom Sex in the City, Charlotte became worried that she has become an old maid on her thirty-sixth birthday, and I am turning fifty-four!

What is an old maid? During the Elizabethan era the term old maid referred to a woman or girl of marriageable age who is unwilling or unable to marry and has no children. In the encyclopedia it states, "old maid is sometimes considered an insulting term". Sometimes? Really, does anyone want to be called an "old maid"? Why are childless unmarriageable women called old maids, but childless unmarriageable men are called bachelors? This is the ultimate example of the term double standard. Unmarried childless men have the right to a degrading term. I am thinking maybe . . . . . "old bastards"!

When the term "old maid" is thrown out there what image comes to mind? Is it that scrawny, wrinkled, glasses on the end of the nose, old lady in the card game? Yep, me too!

It is time to face reality. I fit the criteria:

• I am unmarried. I never ever thought I would be married. There aren't too many men out there that would want to commit to someone with as much baggage as I carry around. When I was young and hanging out in country western bars I never expected a tight jeaned, handsome cowboy to walk in and say to his friends, "Out of the way, boys, the chunky one in the wheelchair with a great smile is mine!"
• I have no children. I have never longed to have children. I like children, but I like them the best when they belong to someone else.
  
• I am wrinkled. Word of warning: Don't drink out of a straw. It is the quickest route to those wrinkles around your lips. I, also, have those horrible school-teacher-glare-at-kids wrinkles between my eyebrows.
• I wear bifocals. I cannot see anything without my glasses. I used to wear contacts, but I always misplace my reading glasses (which I wore on the end of my nose) so I accepted my fate and bought bifocals which I feel is the symbol of old age.
• I am old. I can't see. I have wrinkles in place I didn't know one could get wrinkles. Gravity has caused everything to go south. I can no longer eat spicy food.
  

Yep, it is official. I am an old maid. Worse yet, I am an old maid school teacher. While I was researching the term old maid I came across another term which was "spinster". Spinster is a medieval word that was originally intended to indicate a woman who spun wool, thereby living independently of a male wage. A spinster was a free and independent woman. Medieval people were afraid of spinsters because unmarried women were correlated with witches. Spinsters were free and independent women that could turn people into frogs. In two weeks I will be fifty-four years old, but please don't call me an "old maid"; I prefer spinster!

Paco's Perspective

Hey, Speenster, how old are you in dog years?

The Flip Side

I'm not old. Teach me some tricks.