I went out with someone 30 years my junior. It may or may not have been a date -- I assumed it was friends meeting for lunch until he insisted on giving me a backrub -- but there was no denying the age difference. When I mentioned this to my elder niece, thirtysomething, she quipped: "Aunt Laurie is such a cougar!" My friend Patrick, 65, ditto, "Cougar!" Good lord, people, a cougar isn't even my favorite cat or for that matter car. Call me a jaguar or a lion, but a cougar? Most of us older ladies who are trying to still date don't fancy ourselves predators, which is what the name cougar implies. And most of us aren't always choosing younger or much younger men. Quite simply, men our age are often happily married and most of us aren't sinking so low as to prey on them (that would be more cougary in my book). So why call us cougar? Is it to just point out how socially unacceptable it still is to date a younger man? My grandmother was seven years'
It's that time of year again - swarms of candy heart box buyers cramming the aisles at CVS, desperate husbands searching for the right card (that will do the trick), kids developing cavities from their 37th sweet treat. Then there are the 60-year-old ladies roaming the aisles, smiling a fake half-smile, barely recalling what it felt like to receive a Valen tine. Don't get me wrong. I called this bearable lightness because it is. What a joy it is to to walk by a construction site without fear of whistlers blasting our ear drums, or converse with the male boss and actually hold his gaze. The days of questioning why we were hired (looks) are gone. Our voices are heard. We are respected! Sort of. I am finding that at times, if I look particularly dowdy that day, I am treated with disdain. Not only from men but women. I recently arrived breathless, cold, disheveled to a job, was treated like a bag lady, and a couple days later tested positive for Covid. In the few minutes I interact