Syndicated columnist Marc Munroe Dion: Hey, Madonna, let me walk you home

Dear Madonna,

I'm 65, and I look terrible.

No. Really.

I'm about 20 pounds over my fighting weight. I have more hair in my ears than either one of my cats. I have a mole under my right eye that didn't show up until I was 62, but the doctor says it's nothing to worry about.

No. Really.

Since the mole isn't dangerous, my insurance won't pay to have it removed. I'm a retired newspaper reporter who can barely afford routine dental work, so the mole is staying.

At your recent Grammy appearance, people said you looked like an old lady. You chose to regard this as discrimination but, when your body is about 80% of your act, and your face is 10%, and your talent is 10%, that's gonna happen.

By the way, when I say I look terrible, I forget to mention that I've kind of always looked terrible. There was a time in my late 20s when I could look reasonably attractive if I'd just had my hair cut and I was wearing a good sport coat and expensive shoes and it was dusk.

We were both young, is what we were, and so I looked good if I took my shirt off at a pool party, and you looked good if you took your shirt off everywhere.

Poets can stop time. They freeze a moment with words, and the moment stays that way forever. The trees are always in fresh bud. Your love is always passionate and innocent. The wine doesn't lead to the dull throb of a hangover.

The rest of us are stuck. We droop. We sag. We die. It's not that bad, not until you get really sick there at the end. The nobility of old ladies and old men is that they're facing it; they're not running away.

The surgeon's knife can't cut age out of you. The surgeon knows it, but if he wants to keep driving the good Mercedes, he's not going to tell you.

In my neighborhood, the retired construction workers limp because the left knee is down to bone on bone, the cartilage worn away on a hundred job sites. The old ladies glint at you behind bifocals. They rub their feet at night, remembering hundreds of hours standing in front of a cash register at the grocery store.

We're the survivors, the shrinking remnant of a youthful regiment, and we're holding what little territory we can - a loved wife, grandkids. The barbarians will be over the wall soon.

We're not joyless at all. If we're lucky, we don't have to work, and no one expects us to be young anymore, and that's a relief.

Jeez, Madonna. People expect you to be young, and you can't. And you want to be young, and you can't. The only power to shock you have left is looking like an old lady dressed up as a young dominatrix.

I want to be a 30-year-old reporter with a good tweed sport coat on my back and a cigarette hanging out of my mouth and a go-to-hell attitude and a bad reputation among the female staff at the paper. And I'm not. I can't.

Madonna, I'm not making fun of you. How could I? I'm just trying to walk you a little of the way home because we're all going the same way.

I still laugh. I still write, but not all the time like I used to. I still go to the gym. I take walks. I love my wife. I pet a cat. I do a local news podcast.

I'm slowing down, but I'm slowing down slow.

I'd hug you if I could.

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