Sag

As a man ages, he hopes and prays that he won't develop man-boobs.  That's part-and-parcel of the reason why I get to the gym most mornings and press iron--up, down, up, down--against my chest.  Whatever else may happen, I don't want any sagging in that area.  I want to keep my pecs.

Lord knows there are other parts of the body heading south, however.  Amazing, this force of gravity and what it does to the human body over time.  But men don't want to watch this migration while it's happening.

When I was in high school I measured in at a full six feet, two inches in height.  Now I'm a bit taller than six feet, one inch.  Something has happened during the past thirty-five years and I've lost a part of me.  I keep looking for this lost inch under furniture and in the trunk of the car, but I've not found hide nor hair of me yet.

One of the sad features of manopause, of course, is the sag.  A guy can begin to look like a mouldy set of drapes in no time flat and nothing short of death seems to help.  Once, for a few weeks last summer, I even applied some of my wife's Oil of Olay, but all I got out of the deal were a few cat-calls from construction workers and fewer kisses from my wife.  She couldn't figure out why I was starting to look like Raquel Welch and smell like Sophia Loren.  I reverted back to my usual splash of Aqua Velva aftershave . . . and since I only shave every 2-3 days, I had to rely upon my natural man-scent and tweak it with the faint traces of hamburger and bacon grease that had seeped into my pores.

It is also a depressing turn of events when a man's wife says something like, "You know, you really ought to wear an undershirt if you are going out in public" or "I'm not going to be seen with you looking like that" or "Aren't you shorter than you used to be?"

All of these are indications of the onset of manopause.  And I'm not even going to mention some of the other features.  (See dictionary definition for Depression and Downunder.)

A man can, of course, live in denial.  Many do.  But it is best to face these sagging realities head-on and come to the grateful conclusion that (at the very least) he has a wife who is sagging also.  They can sag together.  And sometimes they can meet in the middle.