There’s things I won’t spend money on and things I will. For example, I spend money on pretentious clothes for book tour, and that’s fine with me. I earn the money and I never judge people’s spending habits, especially my own.
I learned this lesson when I met a man who had spent several thousand dollars on toy trains. You couldn’t pay me to spend money on toy trains, but that’s me. I could see it made him happy, which makes absolute sense, because he’s not me. Turns out that money can buy happiness, if it runs on a miniature track past tiny fake shrubbery, and who am I to judge? Now, when I buy shoes, I think, at least I’m not blowing money on little model boxcars, for God’s sake.
That would be really stupid.
To return to topic, here’s what I don’t spend money on:
My skin.
I wash my face with a three-dollar jug of Cetaphil that I buy at Walgreen’s. If I’m feeling fancy, which I never am, I buy whatever drugstore moisturizer they’re marketing for old broads. You know the one. They call it age-defying or age-defining or some other euphemism, but we weren’t born yesterday, and we all know what it is-the menopausal moisturizer.
I’m thinking that the world divides into two groups: women who buy their skin-care products at CVS and those who buy them at the mall, which is where today’s adventure starts in earnest.
I’m with daughter Francesca, standing at one of the nicest makeup counters at the mall, which also has a skin care line. Oddly, for the past few years, I’ve been getting free samples of this skin care line sent to me in the mail. I have no idea who sends them to me, whether it’s the department store, the Skin Care Gods, or someone who has seen me on the street and been secretly revolted by my skin. But they’ve been sending me these products for a long time, and I’ve been giving them to Francesca. She’d told me that she liked them, and if I cared enough I would have found out why, but it’s probably the one conversation we didn’t have, until I found myself on the paying side of the glistening counter, listening to a gorgeous salesgirl with the most perfect skin ever describe how they put diamond dust in the face wash.
“Did you say diamonds?” I asked. If I had a hearing aid, I would have checked the battery.
“Yes, the dust exfoliates the skin.”
“With diamonds?”
“Yes, and you have to make sure you wash it all off, or your face will be sparkly.”
“Like a stripper?” I asked, and Francesca added:
“The richest stripper in the world.”
Then we listened to the rest of the pitch, and in five minutes, I felt myself mesmerized by the salesgirl, or maybe by her skin. Her pores shimmered like precious gems, never mind that she was twenty years old, which means that she wasn’t a salesgirl, but a saleschild.
Then she showed us a toner, which I had always thought was something you put in your computer printer but was actually applied to the face after diamond-exfoliating, and she also helped me understand that I needed both a day cream and a night cream, though I had never before thought about face cream having a time limit, which shows what a complete rube I’ve been.
She asked, “Do you ladies have an eye cream?”
Francesca had the right answer, which was yes, but only because she had cheated and had gotten the free sample, which I must have been insane to give to her, as my eyes now clearly thirsted for their cream. I wondered if there were special creams for other things on your face, like lip or nose cream, but I was too spellbound to ask.
The saleschild turned again to me. “Which serum do you use?”
“Serum?” My mind flipped ahead to the possibilities. Truth serum? Serum cholesterol? Huh?
“There comes a time when every women needs a serum.” The saleschild held up a tiny green bottle from which she extracted a medicine dropper. “Now, hold out your hand.”
“Yes, master.” I obeyed, and she let fall a perfect teardrop of serum onto the back of my hand, leaving a costly wet spot that dried sooner than you can say, Charge it!
“The infusion is absorbed instantly into the skin, leaving it revived and refreshed.”
“Like a magic potion,” I said, awed, when I felt Francesca’s strong and sensible hand on my arm.
“Mom, we should go.”
But I could only hear her as if from far away. I had slipped over to the dark side, and by the time we left the mall, I had a shopping bag full of bottles and tubes, jars and gels.
In other words, toy trains.