It seems that I’ve lucked into a cultural trend: it turns out that younger men now consider “Cougars“ (women over 40) to be “cool.” How ironic: leave it to guys to think they’ve “discovered” what’s been in front of them the whole time! We Cougars do offer definite advantages: experience, outspokenness and a few extra pounds that can sometimes be converted into cleavage. In other words, we’re here, we’re cougar-licious, and you better be cool with that.
Frankly, I think Cougars have it easier than Retired Circus Lions (their male counterparts). I see way too many of these guys walking around with gray roots that need touching up, tattoos that have blurred with time, and an inability to see their feet because of their well-tended guts. Plus, they may be facing “a certain problem.” Of course, if their doctors allow it, they can get “little blue pills” to reassure themselves that the Lion still roars. (I only wish there were pills for the rest of us who are stuck watching those obnoxious commercials - what is the deal with those separate bath tubs, anyway?). When it comes to making women feel better about themselves, you can be sure the drug companies are not to working on a pill that causes men to say to their wives or girlfriends, “Hey, what’s going on? Talk to me.” They know an “I‘m-Here-For-You“ pill would put them out of business, because if we heard those words from men on a regular basis, there would be no need for women’s meds of any kind.
But all good things comes with a price tag, and we Cougars do have three distinct challenges to face:
When does “Oh my G-d!” really mean “Call 911!”? We’ve reached the stage where the goal of our “safe” words in the bedroom are less about satisfaction and more about summoning help - and no fair trying to count the appearance of a paramedic as the “third” in your menage a trois. Suddenly, all those flippant remarks we made in our youth about dying while “doing it” just aren’t funny.
Ch-ch-ch-changes of life. Your kids may be out of the house, but you’re still getting monthly visits from “Aunt Flo.” Congratulations: you are in that awkward zone where your shopping cart is filled with antacids, wrinkle creams, hearing aid batteries, and condoms “ribbed for her pleasure.” Making a Cougar wrestle with contraceptives is one of Mother Nature’s cruelest jokes, because, unlike your wild twenties, if your period is late, you don‘t know whether it‘s pregnancy or menopause. Speaking of which, those pregnancy tests don’t come in large type! That means you have to ask the girl behind the counter at Walgreen’s if that’s a plus or minus sign, because you left your reading glasses at home again.
Memories/Light the corners of my . . . er, what were we talking about? A recent study from Dr. Louis R. Caplan from Harvard Medical School showed that men who take the aforementioned pills have short-term memory loss. Does that mean these poor men have to write notes to themselves to remember what to do once it takes effect? Their memory loss, however, is nothing compared with the Cougar’s astonishing ability blank out an encyclopedia’s worth of information with absolutely no notice; you have better odds of winning the lottery than getting her to give you the correct name of children, co-workers and pets. This can be extremely awkward in the bedroom when the wrong name is called out in a moment of passion; on the plus side, if things don’t go well there, chances are, she won’t remember.
All told, I can accept these drawbacks in the face of embodying Cougar as new cool.
By the way, thigh-high black mesh stockings are really good at hiding spider veins.
