Vanity isn't Fair

Vanity isn’t Fair ©

By Michael Casey

As I sit here talking to you I am squeezed into an old pair of suit trousers, they have lined legs so they last longer, when you bend  your knees don’t poke through the lining, that extra layer makes them last years long.  Ask your dad or granddad if you don’t believe me, you’ll have to shout because he’s dead 10 years, ha ha, everybody like to be a joker. So these trousers belong to a suit I had maybe 17 years ago, sadly lined legs don’t make me taller though 5feet 10 is tall enough.

We buy suits for interviews, nobody just wears a suit, not unless they are Beatles in the 60s, then it was trendy to wear a suit. I wore this suit for interviews post 1999 I think, when my big job ended and I was cast out into the real world, instead of the surreal world where I had worked for 21years as a computer operator.

We look into the mirror and see does our bum stick out and our legs short and stumpy, the answer is yes in both cases for me. Maybe I have some African genes so I am able to carry a baby on my back/bum otherwise my legs are very strong, I did play in the scrum at rugby and I have stood for decades in my working life. My Shanghai wife always  says I have  strong legs, this came in useful as veins were harvested for my quadruple heart bypass.

So as a good looking man, ok I’m lying, as a man, a George Clooney look alike, ok I look like Huw Edwards of the BBC, yes really, go google if you don’t believe me. So as I was saying before all you doubters started to laugh, I don’t look in the mirror all the time, I just comb the dandruff into a line and then I leave the house. As I walk down the road I may occasionally look at my reflection in the shop windows, and whisper encouragingly to myself, you look so hot, so very hot, then I spin around on my heels and do a John Travolta pose. Now am I being serious or am I joking, you will never know, though the Chinese take-way does have the best window for posing as its all black glass, apart from the menu in white on the inside.

Now are women as a breed more sensitive of their image, and do they look in the mirror or at their own reflections in shop windows more than men or less? Could be a feature in the Daily Mail, I must say I do enjoy Kevin and Andrew on Sky’s Press Preview, but I’ve side-tracked myself now, I must be careful or I’ll trip over Jeremy Corbyn sat on the floor obstructing my access to the toilet, he mustn’t do that with my Ckd.

So if a couple are walking down the street, concentrating on trucking right, what it means  I haven’t a clue , it was in a 10cc song years ago, anyway as they walk who admires themselves the most. And while we are talking about it why do men forever check to see if their zipper is fully up.

When you finish trucking and you meet your friends in the restaurant, ok at Burger King, why do you lie and say, you look wonderful, when in fact she looks like the dog’s dinner, but you are so happy she does, this makes you a winner. This old thing, you say as you twirl so she can admire your red dress, the one you got on eBay for £19.99, you lie and say it cost £100, but your husband  insisted on buying it for you, he didn’t know you used his card online.

You and your friend look around Burger King and slag off other women’s clothes, it’s your hobby for the last 30 years since you met in isolation at you old school. You were both put there for uniform violations you both wanted your school skirts to almost reach your navel.  After your spell in isolation you went the opposite way and became known as the nuns throughout the school, it was satire really but nobody noticed. 

So on it goes, people are really sensitive to some comment about their height, or weight, or in my case my hairy back, though I don’t care, it keeps me warm in winter. I also have very hairy eyebrows, as a child of 4 or 5 I cut them off when I found the family scissors. We just laughed and they grew back again. 

Years later when I was learning some French for Grammar school , I was 13 or so, I paced backforwards, that is backwards and forwards in English, as I learnt the French. I started plucking my eyebrows as I did so. In the end I had all my French but none of my eybrows. They were pluck away, they had almost all disappeared.

I’m not vain, but after my family stopped laughing they helped me alter my appearance, by painting eyebrows on me with mascara. I went to school and did the test, got 18/20, and nothing for my painted on eyebrows. 

Nobody noticed at school. However they 2^nd day my painted on eyebrows were spotted, though nobody dared taunt me, I was the biggest kid in the class. I told them it was Chemistry experiment that blew up in my face. This was a lie, and my priest will no doubt laugh and give zero penance, and tell all his friends, as it was not covered by the seal of the confessional. Later that week a man beckoned to me on my way to school, he gave me an old Chemistry set from his garage, yes even God was laughing at me.

So what is Vanity? It’s when we love our body and clothes too much. When the look rules all, when really it’s the soul that matters most. Some of the prettiest people I have met in my life are not the models male or female, but the characters who make you laugh, the guy who always has a story. The girl who’ll stay late to get the job done, they have true grit and they are really worth knowing. As for me I’m off to pluck my eyebrows, they have never been the same since grammar school, or am I just vain?

   

 my girls the wife and 2 daughters April 2013