I had an appointment with a dermatologist, and as it had turned out, practically every one of them in this vain town is also a self-proclaimed wizard in plastic surgery. “Oh, this will be fun,” I thought, “I know exactly what will happen.”
The doctor with the unspeakable foreign name had zero interest in my itchy skin condition, yet I wasn’t off the hook by a long shot. He scanned me with his radar eyes and was breathing hard. I could almost feel his calculating review of this silver-haired lab-rat in front of him. Where someone else might see a really attractive older woman, he saw potential as if I were Frankenstein’s Bride ready to be re-done and stitched together to a newer, tighter, younger person.
But this wasn’t a certified plastic surgeon for nothing, not someone who’d let an old woman escape his office without landing a teensy tuck or a fattened lip. I expected him almost to whip out handcuffs, a syringe and a scalpel and imagined myself waking up as Silver Barbie (Mattel, take note!).