Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-02-21 - 9:28 p.m.

Off The Wall

I happened to look at myself in the mirror tonight, while I was doing the rounds getting ready for bed, and saw that I was wearing that white toothpaste stuff around one side of my mouth.

It's odd, that, because I had been wondering a few days ago if I would need any mirrors in my house at all if there were no other people. Face it (sorry) that's what we use them for, isn't it? I don't need to look in the mirror to see how I feel today. I don't need to look in the mirror to see if I'm clean; I know if I'm clean or not. I don't need to look in the mirror to see if my clothes are clean or comfortable or if I have remembered to change out of my rubber garden clogs before going to work.*

I look in the mirror to see if I'm Presentable. To make sure that my hair didn't dry funny, that it doesn't have that Woody Woodpecker thing happening, that I haven't accidentally smeared the lower half of my face with the tinted chapstick by mistake, to see that shirt underneath my sweater isn't all yanked off to one side and that I've managed to rinse the toothpaste not just from the inside but also from the outside of my mouth.

I know I've admitted before that I sometimes turn around and look at my ass in the mirror. That's got to be the vain height of using the mirror for Presentable. When, in the course of my day, would it matter to me what my ass looked like? Believe me, if the pants don't fit, I am going to know it without looking. I still have a nerve or two under that padding. Beyond that, the ass is a pretty utilitarian thing, and not terribly likely to have chapstick or toothpaste on it (although I do have really bad mornings sometimes, and you never know.) I just want to know sometimes, if you're walking behind me, what I look like.

If there were no other people to walk behind me, would I ever even wonder what my ass looked like? If an ass drooped in the forest...

I mean, no one looks at the bottom of my feet, and I don't ever think to inspect that part of my anatomy. Although on at least one occasion I should have, because halfway through the workday I noticed the grease pencil thrift shop "$4.99" on the sole of one shoe. Still, even after that, I don't check them.

Maybe it's not about getting rid of other people - I do kind of like other people - but about getting rid of mirrors. If we got rid of mirrors, then Woody Woodpecker hair would be commonplace, and maybe we'd all check each OTHER when we got to work, kind of a companionable thing - "Hey, you got some toothpaste - other side - yeah, you got it." We could inspect each other's asses. "Got a sec? Does my butt look okay in these pants?" "Well, it's a little flat, but at least you don't have that saddlebag thing going on like your green corduroys with the pleats." Or maybe we'd learn not to care at all - I gots toothpaste, you gots toothpaste, all God's chillun gots toothpaste. We could learn to take it as a sign of good hygiene. "Oh, good, you brushed!"

I know there was a time when looking-glasses were only for the very rich. A middle aged woman like myself was - well, she was dead, but let's overlook that for the moment - not likely to know what she looked like from day to day. Of course, women were smart enough in those days to grow their hair long so that they could SEE the ends of it and be sure they weren't woodpeckering straight up; they also had the good sense to stay out of anything resembling pants - yardage hides a multitude of See's. Still, they brushed their teeth with willow twigs. You think they didn't have spinach teeth? They had spinach teeth. And they still managed to work and play and fall in love and have babies and hunt unicorns and fall in love with knights and marry kings (but not necessarily in that order).

I've found my personal need for mirrors is slightly fading - with my eyesight. I can no longer do those Compulsory Female Facial Pore Micro Inspections (I think that's a female thing, but I could be wrong about that). If I do them without the glasses, I can't see well enough, and if I do them WITH the glasses, my eye muscles feel as though I have been trying to read the directions on an aspirin bottle that's lying on the bottom of a fishtank. So I've just given them up over the years, and I've found I'm perfectly happy without them, and I haven't frightened any small children with my face, at least not that I know about. My ass is still plenty large enough to see in the mirror with or without my glasses, but somehow my concern about its appearance is slowly fading, too.

Ahhh, vanity. I'm not too thrilled with the fading eyesight or the slippery memory, but I don't mind noting the slow passing of my vanity.

*After writing this, I did actually manage to arrive at work for the first time in my rubber garden clogs, and no spare shoes in the car. I think I fooled everybody, though, carrying it off as a daring fashion statement. I'm sure no one suspected I'm just incredibly absent-minded.

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