The Cougar Story

Last week someone sent me a u tube video titled : Cougar Barbie. It was mildly amusing. I may have found it more amusing if I myself had not been called a "cougar" last year when I was in New York for my 50th birthday. I was power-walking. I had walked all the way to ABC Home and Carpet from my hotel near Central Park - it's about a 2 hr. hike one way. I really wanted a good work-out after all my culinary indulgences the last 3 days and I was starting the trek back when a young man handing out leaflets for a sample sale blocked my path and stopped me. He gazed into my eyes and as he pressed a leaflet into my hands, said lustily - "Ooooo mama - you're a cougar! " I went left, he stepped right, we did that little "trying to pass by each other dance" and I was off. As I continued my brisk pace up 5th Avenue, I started to smile. Then I started to laugh so hard that I worried people might think I was some kind of deranged street person, so I tried to contain myself. Had someone just referred to me as a cougar? Was it possible that I still had a little "sumthin goin on"? Well, I had just stopped in and checked out this great cosmetic store - one of those places that makes everything with natural ingredients and the girl there had blushed up my cheeks and glossed up my lips, so maybe that was it. Or maybe it was the bleached blonde hair I was sporting. The riskiest dye job of my life in honour of my 50th year. What ever it was, I was bloody taking it as a compliment and although I don't exactly look like "Cougar Barbie", (no leopard print skirts for me and my boobs don't hang to my ankles....yet) maybe, just maybe, I still do have a little "sumthin goin on" afterall.