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“Excuse me, Do you know where they keep the fried chicken?’’

I turned around to see who it was. A cute girl in her 20’s wearing a t-shirt cut till little above her pierced navel and light blue jean shorts. The shorts looked so tight that if she took a deep breath the top button would pop out and hit my face.

My wife who was shopping in the detergent aisle appeared between us by magic. Her face showed the anger of a lioness when a hyena tried to steal her lunch.

“You will find it in the deli, next to the fruits, in the back of the store” I bravely replied to the cutie, ignoring my wife’s gaze.

“Thank you, UNCLE.,” the girl said and walked away.

It felt like the sprinklers in Walmart had opened up and given me a cold shower.

This is the usual quandary when you are in your 40’s. You don’t feel old but the world knows that you are not young. You try to hold on to your youth with all you have.

In my early 40’s, I thought I looked old because I had put on 20 pounds of extra weight.

After working out for 3 years, avoiding all deserts and sugar in my tea, and having an ACL surgery while falling off the treadmill, I was finally able to move the needle of the weighing scale: but in a clockwise direction.

High Blood pressure is the best pal of obesity. My fat, Marlboro smoking doctor had recently come back from the hospital after getting two stents in his arteries. He advised me to start blood pressure medication. These medications have a peculiar effect. They make me run to the bathroom every two hours at night. I turn to the side when I get the urge while sleeping, thinking that the feeling would go away but in a couple of minutes, it reappears.

Half-asleep I tread toward the bathroom, do my business, wash my hands, and come back to sleep. Then my eyes fall on the iPhone to check the time. There are 27 new notifications. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Whatsapp all love and miss you at night. I end up reading everything and even watching the videos forwarded by friends not realizing I have woken up the lioness who is sleeping half a foot away.

“What the hell are you doing so late?” the lioness roars

“Why doesn’t Elon Musk invent a portable toilet which you can summon to use at night with a remote, so you don’t have to go till the bathroom? He can call it TOILESLA” or something,” I murmured trying to show off my scientific brain.

“You are an idiot. You don’t need any invention, you need adult-diapers. Go to the pharmacy tomorrow and get it and stop disturbing my sleep ” My wife replied.

The next day, I woke up and my eyes are swollen due to a lack of sleep. I had to drive my daughter to her college in Pittsburgh. She was excited to go and we were miserable.

“Daddy, you have a bald patch at the back of your head.” my daughter pointed out, She was sitting on the rear seat of my squeaky preowned 1996 Toyota Corolla.

After I reached Pittsburg, I dragged the suitcase to her dorm room. Once settled, I took out my iPhone, turned the camera on, switched the camera setting from back to front, stood in front of the dresser mirror, and put my hand up near the back of my head. I could see the image of the back of my head resembling a crater from Mars. I was doing this while my daughter’s roommate was watching me and giggling away from the other room. My daughter rolled her eyes at me. She was well trained by the lioness. I quickly put my phone down.

After the long drive back, I reached home petrified and did what every intelligent, professional man would do. I ‘Googled’ the remedy for hair loss. From that day, every page or website I went to I could see ads for hair products, from shampoos and conditioners to hair weaving and hair transplanting.

After extensive research, I self-diagnosed the problem and decided, that I needed to take one Finasteride tablets every day. I was about to order the tablets from an online pharmacy store in Canada. My eyes fell on the common side effects which are; Loss of sex drive, Erectile dysfunction, Decrease in libido, and ejaculation disorder.

I instantly gave up on the idea. What the point in looking like a Ferrari if your engine fails to start.

Photo Credit: Alex Iby