"Who's that old lady in the mirror?"

I do not know the date of the original publication of this, but a copy of the following was send to me a while back; I loved it so much I framed it and it is hanging on my bedroom wall:


Dear Readers: My cousin Ruth Davidson sent this to me. I have no idea who wrote it, but I laughed a lot.

     Senior Sentiments

A very weird thing has happened. A strange old lady had moved into my house. I have no idea who she is, where she came from of how she got in. All I know is that one day, she wasn’t there, and the next day, she was.

She manages to keep out of sight for most part, but whenever I pass a mirror, I catch a glimpse of her. And whenever I look in the mirror to check my appearance, there she is, completely obliterating my gorgeous face and body.

I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I thick she is stealing money from me. I go to the ATM and withdraw $100.00 and a few days later it’s all gone. I certainly don’t spend money that fast.

Food also seems to disappear at an alarming rate — especially in the good stuff like ice cream, cookies and candy. She must have a real sweet tooth, but she better watch it, because she is really packing on the pounds. To make herself feel better, she is tampering with my scales to make me think I am putting on weight, too.

For an old lady, she is quite childish. She likes to play nasty games, like going into my closet when I’m not home and altering my clothes so they don’t fit. And she messes with my files and papers so I can’t find anything. She also fiddles with my VCR so it doesn’t record what I’ve programmed.

She gets into my mail, newspapers and magazines before I do, and blurs the print so I can’t read it. And she has done something really sinister to the volume controls on my TV, radio and telephone. Now all I hear are mumbles and whispers.

She has done other things — like make my stairs steeper, my vacuum cleaner heavier and all my knobs and faucets harder to turn. She even made my bed higher so that getting into and out of it is a real challenge. Lately, she had been fooling with my groceries before I put them away, applying glue to the lids, making it almost imposable for me to open the jars.

She has taken the fun out of shopping for clothes. When I try something on, she stands in front of the dressing room mirror and monopolizes it. She looks totally ridiculous in so of those outfits, plus she keeps me from seeing how great they look on me.

Just when I though she couldn’t get any meaner, she proved me wrong. She came along when I went to get my picture taken for my driver’s license and just as the camera shutter clicked, she jumped in front of me. No one is going to believe that the picture of that old lady is me.
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Ann Landers’ column appears in the Life section Monday through Saturday and in the At Home section on

Sundays.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~end of copy.
 For more information on Ann Landers'  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Landers
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