Ladies, lipstick and love.

• Cecelia Tyler, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2006

Ladies, lipstick and love.

I step into the restaurant and three things become immediately obvious; these women are vertically challenged, rapidly aging and not expecting a thirteen year-old girl.
I self consciously slide into my seat beside Granny and observe nearly fifty widows over seventy catching up, gossiping, comparing grandchildren and great grand children. Most of these age abundant gals have given up on trying to stay young and have opted for the ‘dolled-up-toilet-paper-dog’ look, which is quite flattering to people their age. Few though, are completely denying the fact that their cheeks are at a different altitude to the rest of their face. One particular woman, who I am sitting opposite, has used 2 ½ tubes of anti aging cream and a tub of foundation to cover her saggy bits, which, I concluded, wouldn’t be there if she smiled more often and had birthdays less often. “Audrey, will you be going to bingo after lunch with Muriel and me?” Her name is Audrey and after eating she always carefully applies more lipstick, a shade that happens to match her hair, which she persists in regularly dying a light tinge of pink. You can tell that these ladies thoroughly enjoy dressing up because they are all beads and brooches. The one thing that every single one of these women has in common is their love for lipstick; colours range from subtle pink to violent red. Many women, though, have made the tragic mistake of having more lippy on their teeth than their lips. One poor granny has lipstick bleeding up her wrinkles and heading for her nose and chin. Another thing that surprises me about these women is their names. They all have names like Audrey, Dorothy, Nancy and Muriel. One particular woman, whose name is Dorothy, would give Dorothy the dinosaur a run for her money; she is fun, spotty and verging on prehistoric. Another woman, who is down the table from me, is a feisty lass who is well into her nineties. Every wrinkle she has would tell a fascinating tale and she reminds me of those women seen in movies, bashing the daylights out of some thug with her handbag. She is completely pink and white; her face is pink with a darker pink lipstick, and her hair, ghost white. Her teeth are a combination of glistening white and accidental lipstick pink. A light pink t-shirt compliments her white jumper which has pink butterflies on it. Two giant pink grapes clutch to her earlobes and a plastic pink necklace hangs loosely around her neck. As a waiter passes she comments loudly on the fact that the soup is ‘stone cold’ and the lunch is taking forever to arrive. The waiter plasters on a smile and comments on the fact that it is difficult to serve 50 people at once. True, the soup is cold and I am reaching the famished point waiting for my lunch, but not one of these women, not even me, dare complain except the pink lady, as I have affectionately named her. As I sit and observe the antics of the ‘lunchers’ it’s becoming increasingly obvious that they are exactly the same as the young girls they grandmother; they are vain, love to dress up, play with babies and they absolutely love pink.
My lunch arrives and I ponder on how I will be when I reach that age. Will I love pink? Will I lovingly dote upon my grandchildren and spoil them rotten? I hope so. And as I sit eating my fish I realise that the ladies that I have just described are exactly who I want to be when I get old.