Turning Prehistoric

Look in the mirror. Are you turning into your mother?

No. It's even scarier. Are you turning into the Venus of Willendorf?


When I first met the V of W in the early Seventies, I thought it was so sad that prehistoric man had such terrible eyesight and fine-motor skills. This lump of stone DID NOT look like WOMAN. It did not roar like Helen Reddy. For Playtex it had numbers too big to ignore.

In the early Seventies, just after the last Ice Age, we loved our history teacher. We grooved on Greeks, Romans, pagans and barbarians. We appreciated casual Friday short sleeve statues of Aphrodite, and suffered with wool allergy in our Pep Club booster mini pantskirts during freezing football games. I don't recall varicose being a vocabulary word when we prepared for the SAT.

varicose early 15c., from L. varicosus "full of dilated veins," from varix (gen. varicis) "dilated vein."

It was good to be young, happy, skinny, wrapped in white sheets, and challenged to excellence by a charismatic teacher. We didn't know V of W would stare back at us from the mirror thirty years later telling us of the accuracy of prehistoric man's artistic representation.