Anyone knows what can be done with a hose...

Remember when you were about 13 and you looked at the faces of models in Mademoiselle Magazine and said to yourself, "Self, I wish we had those high cheekbones with those chic hollows beneath them." And then you went to look at your cherubic-looking fat babyface in the mirror, tried to suck in your cheeks to achieve the level of chic you desired, and finally ended up cursing your ugly, hopeless existence?

And remember some years later when, still cursing your less-than-angular face, you discovered that the light swish of a make-up brush primed with brown eyeshadow, when carefully aligned with, but slightly below, your faulty cheekbones, could fool the entire animal kingdom into thinking you had the chic hollows you so desired? (You didn't really want to hang out in brightly lit places anyway, did you?)

And remember when your mother said, "Be careful what you wish for... it might come true!" Who could forget an ominous warning like that? But what, I wondered, could possibly be bad about hollow chics... er, cheeks?

You don't remember any of this? Well, I do. And sad to say, Mother knew whereof she spoke. This disheartening fact was brought home to me in the two days following my wrist surgery, days in which my post-surgical pain was being addressed with a combination of pharmaceutical drugs: naproxyn and the ever-popular oxycodone.

Dosed to the point of feeling pretty fine (much finer than someone who's just been cut up, really), I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. There was something odd about it. "Huh," I thought, and went back to bed.

Time went by and I had occasion to, you know, pass by the bathroom mirror again. "Hmmm," I mumbled, taking another look. "I must be pretty fucked up, because I think I look really good for someone who's just been cut up. I should probably stagger back to bed before I fall down and hurt myself." And so I did.

As you might expect, after I'd had a good long sleep I happened by the bathroom mirror again. "Wow," I thought, studying my reflection. "Look what a good long sleep does for ya! I look freaking awesome!"

And I am not kidding, people, I looked every bit of twenty years younger!

Time passed, specifically about a day and a half, when suddenly it became alarmingly clear to me that oxycodone and naproxyn were not my friends. In fact, such enemies were we that I feared I might die from our particular altercation. I stopped sharing special moments with them immediately.

As luck would have it, more time passed and I didn't die. And when I woke up still alive a day or two later, as you would expect, I passed by the bathroom mirror yet again.

This is the part of the story where we learn about hollow chics... er, cheeks. Because now they appeared in the bathroom mirror. I'd seen them there before, I realized, but they'd been missing since my wrist surgery. With their sudden reappearance, I could see that Mother's ominous warning was not groundless. At the age of 58, having achieved my desired level of chic through the assistance of nothing but time and gravity, I now know what's wrong with hollow cheeks. They make me look my age.

And my astounding good looks? Well, you might be thinking I just had a swelled head, and in a manner of speaking, you'd be right. Whatever. I was lovely while it lasted. (It's a pity one can't be selective about which pharmaceutical side effects to manifest, and an infuriating irony that I still have swelling, but now it's all wasted on my cherubic-looking fat babyhand!)

[Sigh...]