Lighten Up, Prune Face
After a lot of very serious, expensive and esoteric laboratory research involving, for instance, telomeres in the chromosomes of certain cells, scientists have determined there is a link between stress and aging. No, really. More important, they’ve figured out that increasing stress helps you age quicker. So, start stressing over this and start crumbling sooner.
The study, published by the National Academy of Sciences, was funded by prestigious institutions and hailed as “a real landmark observation.”
Hello, what idyllic island have these folks been on? Stress = Aging. With no public outlay, any parent could have reported those findings with great authority within hours of experiencing a first child’s birth. Look at the bedside photos of the proud papa and mama holding this blanketed bundle of joy who arrived moments before. The mother looks fairly fatigued. The father clearly hasn’t a clue. But they’re both genuinely smiling.
Now, look closely at the same parents’ faces in later photos, say, four months after the happy birth day. Same unstressed blanketed figure, but the parents have smaller smiles and larger circles under the eyes. And are those infant wrinkles on Mom and Dad?
Examine photos from the first day of school. Yikes, has it been only five years since that hospital picture? Check out the Christmas morning pictures around the tree amid the torn packaging after a long night of Santa preparation. Are there eyes somewhere in those dark circles? The New Year’s Eve photos look happy. But that was before the holiday bills arrived.
Why aren’t the parents smiling broadly while signing the brand new leg cast, thanks to football? Note the family photo right after the child’s successful driver’s test. No parents in the prom photos; they’re probably upstairs sleeping from a second job. College graduation pictures: Are Mom and Dad getting shorter? Do tuition bills cause gray hair? (That is real hair, right?)
The wedding pictures show a deliriously happy, outrageously young newlywed couple between two sets of pleasantly smiling parents. Do they know something?
It takes only minutes of research, free of institutional underwriting, to peruse the photos documenting years of stress-sped aging. The photos confirm the formal study. And the parental belief that every captured moment -- well, almost every -- was worth the wrinkles.
