When you’re young, your whole body knows it. Especially your belly button. If you are thirty-one or older, you know what I’m talking about.
But maybe you’re in your twenties and you don’t know what I’m talking about, so I’m going to tell you.
Look at your stomach in the mirror. If you don’t have a six pack then you’re probably looking at some attractive fat–the supple kind that stands at attention to form an attractive little pooch. This precious pooch is the absolute embodiment of youth. Your pooch is defiantly attentive. Like the cocky twenty-something it is, it stares gravity in the face and screams: you’re not the boss of me.
At any time, your pooch is one solid bowel movement away from bikini-ready. It laps up the sun, folding in on itself seductively as you bend, instead of creasing once and never becoming smooth again. In bed at night, your lover holds onto your pooch, a tiny handful of comfort in a sea of elbows and knees. Your pooch isn’t made heavy by a night of drinking and an early morning fast food run. In a few hours time it will be standing proudly in your midriff, bearing itself triumphantly in its perpetual youngness.
Ah–you’re pooch! It is your sexiest asset.
Your friends will complement your supple tummy, as you gaze upon it, taking a handful of perky fat and lamenting your wish to lose five pounds. Irregardless, you know you look good because you jump out of bed and into a two-piece again the next day. Hours of drinking rum in the sun is no match for your sexy little pooch. It seems to you that as long as you live, your pooch will remain your attentive partner in crime.
And then you turn 31.
Mind you, it begins slowly when you turn 30, but there’s something about your 31st birthday that puts your pooch into a rather harsh perspective.
It won’t even be your pooch that you notice at first–it will be your belly button. One day you will wake up and when you look in the mirror, your belly button will frown back at you. At first, you’ll think you’re seeing things. Your belly button isn’t unhappy. It has no reason to be unhappy with all the ice-cream you’ve been eating! You’ll ignore it at first, hurry into your clothes and quickly forget about it….until the next time you find yourself naked in front of a mirror. There it will be: frowning at you. Soon you’ll realize it’s not your belly button’s fault, it is frowning because gravity (as it always does) has won in the battle for your pooch. Your young, supple fat will surrender and inevitably begin to droop. I know–it’s a nightmare! Nobody should have to make such a discovery so early in the morning.
You may not even notice in the morning–you may not notice until you see a picture of yourself at the beach, a smile on your face and a frowning belly button. And that’s when you’ll know it: your pooch is no spring chicken, and neither are you!
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La Dolce Vita 