God Save the Sweet Potato Queens by Jill Conner Browne Page A

ages are clamoring for the Queens.
    I, personally, had two stellar age-related events last year. The first one occurred at a swimming pool where I often take BoPeep and her buddies to loll about in the sun. Besides being the Boss of all the Sweet Potato Queens, I also happen to be the once and future queen of the cannonball, which is what I was doing when this event occurred—I was conducting, and winning, a cannonball contest with all the kids and the only other adult who will play with us, T. P. Walker. I also had my friend Bill’s son and his buddies with me that day, so I was in the midst of a veritable covey of children. Bill came by to check on us and we were having the cannonball contest. I guess we had made a fair amount of racket because some of the older residents around the pool came out to see what was cooking. T.P. swam over to me in hysterics. He said that one of the women (now, she’s probably a hundred and has cataracts like Coke bottles, but I don’t care and neither would you) asked him who all the kids were and he said, “That’s my friend Jill, and that’s her daughter and her friends,” and so on. That wasn’t enough for her—she pointed out each child and wanted to know who he/she was and T.P. dutifully named them all. Finally she said, “But who’s the one in the black swimsuit?” and he said that’s the mama—that’s Jill—to which she replied, “Why, she can’t be anybody’s mama! She can’t be more than thirteen!” Let me just tell you, there are few things in life better than being forty-six and having somebody—anybody—guess that you are thirteen. As a matter of fact, I don’t think there is anything better than that. I called Bill over immediately and made T.P. tell it all again. Oh, it was the high point of my life, all right; I figure it had to be all downhill from that point. Or so I thought.
    Just a few short months after that I was helping a sick friend (who shall remain nameless, but for the sake of discussion, let’s just call him something, say, John Doe or even Michael Rubenstein) to check into the hospital with a really brutal stomach bug, and the woman filling out his admission papers looked past him to where I was sitting and said, “And is this your daughter?” Now, I can tell you, sick as he was, he didn’t look that bad, and I sure as hell didn’t look that good, but hey, “gift horse,” I say. I might have pushed it over the top when I spoke up and said, “Yes, ma’am, and I’m the baby—I have lots of older sisters at home.” If that didn’t kill him, he’s bulletproof.
    My friend Skip, or Skippy when he’s being darlin’, which is most all the time, has a pesky habit of going out with women younger than himself. Women of all ages love Skippy because, as I said, he’s darlin’, but the Queens don’t like him paying attention to anybody other than us and especially not to anybody younger than we are. In an attempt to rid him of this predilection for pre-forties women, I explained it to him. I got right in his face and asked him what he could see, to which he replied, “Not a damn thing.” Of course, I knew that because I couldn’t see him, either. After forty you just can’t see stuff that’s real close up. This is a good thing. It’s nature’s way of compensating for what’s happening to our faces and bodies. If we can’t see it, it’s not really happening—like closing your eyes and thinking you’re invisible.
    This explains a lot when you think about it. Like when you see a woman our age still wearing her hair real long and dressing like a teenager: It’s because she can’t see well enough to tell how ridiculous she looks, and she still thinks she’s cute. And if she sticks to guys her age and older, they’ll fall for it, too, because they can’t see either. However, I told Skippy, still in his face—she can see
you!
This close, and she can still see everything! He gasped in horror. Then I walked about thirty feet