The final winner of the “Age, She’s Such a Beotch” story contest with three winners receiving a copy of  author Stephanie Dolgoff’s, “My Formerly Hot Life”, is Kim.  Her story proves that men’s chauvinism can still cause us embarrassment, then we bounce back and remember they are the gender that shifts themselves in public and think no one saw them.  Mamas… don’t let your babies grow up to be Joaquin Phoenix.

Here I am at one of the best street fests in Chicago, Retro on Roscoe, with my younger brother and a couple of his friends.  Retro is great because it tends to be a little bit of an older crowd no 20 something’s getting under my feet.  Here we are, enjoying a few drinks having a great time, I’m checking out the scenery – very nice – when I turn to see my brother talking to a pretty good looking guy, we’ll call him random guy – RG.  I’m half eavesdrop, half paying attention to one of the girls with us when the friend turns to me. Wow, really cute, and he starts making the idle chit chat.  I think it’s going well and he looks a bit older than my brother, which is even better.  We’re having great conversation, laughing , witty banter and then it happens. “So are you Joe’s younger or older sister?” Now make no mistake, I look good for my age, but there should be no question that I am older than my brother.  ”I’m his older sister.” That should be it, right?  Move on, next question, right? NO!  “ Oh really,”  look of utter shock  ”by how much?”  I pause, partly because it’s difficult to do math after 4 drinks and partly never really paying attention to my brother’s age. “You don’t know?” he says getting anxious.  I look at my brother, “How old are you, again?” then back to RG,  “Oh, yea, there’s 6 years difference between us,” and before difference has left my lips, he has his back to me excusing himself to get another drink!  Nice! REAL NICE!!! Way to be subtle! 

It took me aback for a second, but like any smart 40 something , I promptly sprung back and yelled to him to,  ”You can get us all a drink… we’ll be right here.”  He brought back the drinks, but that’s the last contact we had that day. Upon discussing, and laughing about this incident with my brother, he said “he didn’t leave that fast….well, yea, I guess he did, but he’s like 33.”  And I thought Cougars were in… 

GYNA GALS!! Remember my little contest? Well, after purchasing an economy size package of Depend and wetting myself, I was able to narrow down the Three Winners! It was hard – you gals out there have slap-ass funny stories. I was just laughing, wetting my pants and slapping my ass simultaneously for an entire month. My boyfriend thought I had Turrets.

The three lovely ladies won a copy of  author Stephanie Dolgoff’s, “My Formerly Hot Life” which reached #32 on the The New York Times Best Seller List! Congrats, ladies! Embarrassment and bounce-back WELL DONE!

The next three days, I will feature each winner’s story! Our first story is from Leiah in Lake Charles, LA, a little lady that went from 26 to 92 in a mark of a pen thanks to our responsible voter registration system. ENJOY!

I recently wrote a blog post regarding not being very thrilled about getting yet another piece of mail that should be delivered to a person of more advanced age than mine. The day after receiving yet another letter asking me if I was aware of the potential changes to my Medicare benefits I remembered where this all began.

My nephew Christopher was in kindergarten when his baby sister was born. My sister-in-law asked if I would take her place at the Tiger Cub Mom & Me camp-out and, of course, I agreed. I picked him up early that Saturday morning and we headed north to the Boy Scout campgrounds. It was mid-October in Texas so temperatures in the high 70s were not out of the norm. We pitched our tent, hiked, did whatever crazy badge stuff he needed to do, finally ending the evening with a campfire and then heading to bed…as much as a sleeping bag on the hard ground can be considered a bed.

Have you ever heard what they say about weather in Texas? If you don’t like it, wait a minute it will change. It did. When we woke up the next morning it was in the 40′s. The 40′s!! I had no cold weather stuff with me. No jacket. Nada. I was in a T-shirt and jeans. And miserable. Thank the Good Lord above we only had to stay there until after breakfast and a SHORT pack, den…some kind of wild animal group meeting, then we were free to go. Oh, I forgot…there was no hot water there at the camp. Only cold, frigid, liquid icicles dripping from a shower head that had about 7 openings…not that I know that for a fact because I refused to stand under what had to be the original idea behind the waterboarding technique. We packed up and headed home as quickly as we could so that I could warm up and finally take a shower.

I brought Christopher home and then headed to my parents house. I came in, dropped off my bags and headed straight to the shower. An extremely nice, long, hot shower. When I got out, my mom told me I had gotten a phone call while in the shower…and then started laughing. Here is the telephone conversation as my mom told me:

Mom: Hello?
Caller: Is Leiah there?
Mom: She’s unavailable right now – can I take a message?
Caller: Oh no, she’s not sick or anything is she? Is she doing OK; will she be available later?
Mom: If you must know, she’s in the shower. She just got back from taking her nephew camping.
Caller: Oh. {crickets}……This is the Jefferson County Democratic Party. We were calling all our senior citizens to see if they needed a ride to the polls next week.
Mom: Senior citizens?
Caller: Yes ma’am.
Mom: I think you’ve got the wrong person. She’s only 26
Caller: Really? We have her birth date as 10/22/00…she’s not 92? Well, I’m sorry to bother you. Enjoy your day and don’t forget to vote!

92?!?!? Yep, they forgot to enter the year I was born when they printed the new Voter Registration cards that year. Can you imagine the thoughts going through that person’s head when they heard that the old lady they thought was 92 had taken her nephew camping?

Ever since then I’ve gotten AARP information, Medicare junk mail, scooter information and any kind of ‘old people’ junk mail showing up in my mailbox. I guess by the time I finally do partake in these services, there’ll be some crazy math going on.

If you’re happy with wrinkles and you have them, clap your hands….. clap…clap… WHAAATEVER!! I like wrinkles as much as I liked my 9th grade English teacher. She would read my papers aloud, correcting openly as she read. Suck it, lady! She was just upset because donning 80′s flybacks in ’92 with yellow hair/grey roots lead me to believe she was much older. At 14, I didn’t have mouth control, so when her 7 year old daughter visited class, I very politely said, “You have such a cute granddaughter.”  She corrected me immediately then hated and tortured me for the rest of the year. I didn’t know how I felt about wrinkles at 14, but I do now… and with experience, I realized my loathe for her and facial lines were the same.  I have a problem with harboring feelings…..

ANYWHO..to my point… At 25, we all start freaking out about age. At 33, I like it’s ridiculous that someone at the age of 25 doesn’t realize how young they are, then again, my girlfriends at 43 keep telling me I don’t realize how young I am… and so on…. and so on. Regardless of the decade  inhabited, we have an embarrassing story with age involved.  Whether someone got our age terribly wrong, we wore something too old or too young or we wet our pants from sneezing … most of us have a funny, embarrassing story attributed to age.

Tell us your story! I’ll sweeten the deal. With the help of  Stephanie Dolgoff, blogger and author of  “My Formerly Hot Life,”  I’m able to offer THREE lucky winners a copy of her book! It launches on August 17th which means.. the winners will be lucky owners of the book as it hits book stores!

Here’s the deal:

1) Submit your story here by August 18th or email your story to lauren@girlyourenotalone.com.  In the “title” or “subject” line please put “Contest – INSERT YOUR STORY TITLE.” **

2)Please keep entries to 700 words max!

3) Please make sure to add your full name, email address and home address at the end of your story to ensure winners receive their books!

4) Winners will be announced Sunday, August 22nd!

5) Share with as many of your friends as possible! Encourage anyone you know with a perplexing age story to SUBMIT! Regardless if your submission makes the Top Three, it is likely to be used for future posts and related GYNA publications.

6) What are you waiting for? Pour yourself a little vino, make a litte ice cream sandwich and start writing your experience! Get it in by August 18th! Don’t worry about grammer/misspellings! It’s the content we care about!

** By sending entry via email, you submit your story to girlyourenotalone.com, and it is understood that your story may be posted on girlyourenotalone.com or any future GYNA publication with no monetary compensation.