Be Careful What You Joke About.

My right eye has developed a condition characterised by itching, reddening due to engorgement of the surrounding tissue, and the skin between the eyelid and eyebrow drooping to leave the eye looking partially closed. The effect of all this is to lay a longstanding joke of mine that I’m beginning to look like Quasimodo. It isn’t a joke any more. I really am beginning to look like the fabled hero of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, at least as he is represented in the classic 1939 film adaptation.

This is of some concern to me, but I’ve decided it needn’t be because I no longer have any reason to be vain. Time waits for no one and no one is impervious to the physical effects of ageing, not even me.

And so if children hide behind their mothers’ skirts as I pass by them, if women with babies give me a noticeably wide birth, if the staff in shops and coffee houses pause and stare for several pregnant seconds before asking ‘how may I help you?’, if groups of young women point at me and giggle, if young men smirk through ill-disguised sideways glances, I only have to convince myself that it doesn’t matter and I’m not embarrassed, and then all may be well.

But it does raise a question: Is it better to be pitied or mocked? I’ll definitely take the latter.