Three crazy images make me wonder about modern sanity

I came across three things recently that made me question whether I’m living in the same universe as everyone else. Maybe you can make sense of them. My brain still hurts from trying to figure them out.

The first one was a video I saw. On the left side of the screen was a picture of a mature woman, like someone’s grandma. She was attractive in a matronly way, like someone you’d see in church or in the library.

Then on the right side of the screen was a picture of another woman. This one is made up to the hilt, with shaded long hair and a shiny complexion, the very definition of glitz and glamor. You could imagine seeing her on “Dancing with the Stars” or in a nightclub at 2 a.m., partying hard.

Well, guess what? The grandmother and the dancer are the same woman.

When you play the video, time-lapse photography starts, and slowly the grandmother turns into the dancer through the magic of makeup. I’m using the word magic here for a reason; the transformation was that amazing.

Now I’ll admit I know very little about makeup. I grew up with two brothers. My mother as far as I could tell didn’t use much makeup. Neither does my lovely wife. But if makeup can do a transformation like this, it truly is amazing.

Here’s the thing: About halfway through the video, all the deep wrinkles on the woman’s face just go away. It’s like time travel, like she suddenly got 30 years younger. My wife tells me this part was done with “foundation.” If you’re like me and know nothing about that, let me put it into terms you might understand.

Say you’re doing bodywork on a car. You bang out the dent or weld it up and now you have a solid but rough surface to work with. You then get out the Bondo and the sanding sealer and, after careful application and a lot of sanding, you have a silky smooth surface ready for paint.

That’s what this woman’s foundation thing reminded me of. The wrinkles, or dents if you will, just go away, and all of a sudden everything is smooth with no blemishes. I’ll never again be able to go into the bodywork section of an auto parts store without thinking of this woman’s face.

While it’s great that makeup can make you look decades younger, I have to question whether it’s kind of false advertising in a way. I mean, if you met the woman on the right side of the video — the glamorous dancer — you’d be thinking she’s one kind of person.

Then, if you saw her without the makeup, you’d think she was collecting Social Security. My wife tells me there are women who never let their husbands see them without their makeup on.

Imagine that. It’s like being a superhero: Do you wear your costume and display your magical powers or not? What a way to live.

I know, it’s different for women. They always want to look nice. The guys I know look the same whether they’re fishing, riding a motorcycle, or attending a wedding. Only the clothes change (and for some of my friends the clothes don’t even change that much). Hey, no matter who you are, it’s what’s on the inside that counts anyway.

Then next thing I saw that made me scratch my head was a TV show about recreational vehicles, or RVs. I’ve owned a couple of these over the years, and I may be interested in one again if extended travel becomes one of my retirement priorities.

The show focused on a family with two high school-age daughters. The parents wanted to buy an RV so they could have some quality time with the girls before they went off to college. Sounds totally reasonable. Then the salesman asks the father what his budget is for a new RV and, without blinking an eye, he says, “Around $250,000.” Yikes!

Remember, this is not a case where a family is selling their home and using the proceeds to buy an RV to live in. This is a totally discretionary purchase to do something fun with the kids, like taking them to the beach or to an amusement park. I don’t know about you, but I doubt I’ll ever have a quarter of a million dollars for a totally discretionary purchase.

Do people really live like this, with that much available money to play around with? I see a lot of RVs on the road, and the RV stores around here are acres large and packed to the gills with fancy rigs.

Maybe everyone has a great stock broker or a rich uncle, but that show still left me shocked. I know money is not worth what it used to be worth, but that is still a lot of cash for something that can leak oil or get a flat tire and may have a clogged toilet at any time. Been there, done that.

The third crazy thing I saw recently was a TV commercial. It shows a young woman meeting with her investment adviser.

He asks her how long she plans to work, and she responds with a big smile, “Around 70.”

Wow. I know I’m a little long in the tooth at this point, but it wasn’t that long ago that working to age 70 was only done if you had absolutely no other options to pay the bills.

Here’s the kicker: The investment adviser asks the young woman what she plans to do when she finally retires, and she says, “I’d like to run with the bulls.”

So, let’s see if we have this right: She’s going to work to age 70, and then fly to Pamplona, Spain and enter the semi-controlled madness called “running with the bulls,” where wild animals and throngs of out-of-control people run for their lives down narrow, crowded streets like drugged rats in an endless maze, screaming, ranting and raving while trying not to get gored, run over, or crushed.

This is what she is looking forward to do when she retires. At 70. Right.

Who is writing these commercials? Are they kidding or what? Someone should test the water over there. I knew there would be problems when they cut back on mental-health funding.

So there you have it: Women taking decades off their appearance, people spending 250 large on a discretionary purchase, and people working to age 70 before they go running with the bulls. All I can say is: Thank God for single-malt scotch.

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